In a future where the elite inhabit an island paradise far from the crowded slums, you get one chance to join the 3% saved from squalor.

In 1856, the emperor Dom Pedro II lived a marriage of appearances with Teresa Cristina, with whom he was forced to marry at a young age by his parents' political alliance, having two daughters with her: Isabel and Leopoldina. He truly loves Countess Luisa, a cultured and time-ahead woman who fights for the abolitionist cause and women's rights, married to Eugenio, the emperor's cousin. At the same time there are sisters Pilar and Dolores: the first went to a convent after her mother's death in childhood, growing up among books and dreaming of studying medicine - inspired by the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first doctor in the world -, while the second stayed at home to take care of her father, Colonel Eudoro, growing up repressed, illiterate and without vanity.

After eight years of a political exile imposed by the Brazilian military dictatorship, sociologist Herbert de Souza returns to his homeland. Alongside democracy activists, he faces the arrival of AIDS and puts the devastating impact of hunger under the spotlight. Overcoming his fragile health and personal tragedy, he creates the largest social awareness campaign in Brazilian history.