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The Secret of Alicanto is a story of an unlikely romance between two people living in different universes.

Maria Oliveira, a Brazilian immigrant, is a nurse in West Palm Beach, Florida, whose husband absconded before the birth of her twins in the fall of 1999. Her luck changes when in a church lottery she wins a one-week jaunt to Portugal. On a cruise to the Douro Valley, part of her travel itinerary, she meets Jerry Feinberg, a divorced 55-year-old professor of Biology at Harvard, who is spending time in Portugal as part of his sabbatical.

After spending few days together, Jerry is thrilled when she invites him to visit her in Florida. Despite initial hiccups, including Jerry's lack of experience with children, after multiple visits, Jerry's attachment to the twins, Lara and Peter, begins to grow. But when he proposes moving in together in his house near Boston, she demurs, in part because she is hiding a big secret that she hasn't shared with him or anybody else.

This grows into a conflict that could destroy their relationship, until Maria breaks down and reveals that her husband is not the father of her twins. Shocked less by the revelation of the paternity of her children than by her keeping this secret from him, Jerry returns home. Soon he realizes that Maria was keeping the secret to protect her children and implores her again to move with him.

A year after their fortuitous meeting in Portugal, Maria and Jerry get married and move to his home in the Boston suburb of Belmont. When the twins are 10, the family travels to Brazil to visit Maria's sister and her family on the promise that they will also go to the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, the place where Alicanto, the precious metals eating mythical bird on their mommy's necklace is rumored to reside.

On the last day of their stay in San Pedro de Atacama, while strolling the main street, Maria gets separated from the family and stops at a shop where Alicanto necklaces just like hers are on a display. Looking through the glass window, she recognizes the man behind the counter and is stunned...