'Eréndira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of misfortune began to blow.'

While her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Eréndira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhausted that she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on a nearby table - and is fast asleep when it topples over...

Eight hundred and seventy-two thousand , three hundred and fifteen pesos, her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Eréndira must repay for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Eréndira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?