Synopsis:

Peru in the early 1980s, as terrorist violence begins to shake the country. The Bad Intentions follows a chapter in the life of Cayetana de los Heros, a solitary eight-year-old girl raised by the household staff. When her mother Inés returns from a long trip and announces an unexpected pregnancy, Cayetana's fragile world collapses.

The girl locks herself in her room and solemnly declares that the day her brother is born will be the day of her own death.

Only her imagination — and the intervention of Peru's national heroes — can save her: José Olaya, Miguel Grau, Francisco Bolognesi, and many others. The heroes come to life from her school posters and become human in Cayetana's fantasy world, where she seeks advice and protection for her personal battles.

A child's vision of a country and its need for heroism in times of crisis. All the great deeds, all the wars converge in the mind of a girl who searches for shelter in the imagined "Founding Fathers." The book heroes speak to her and together they wonder whether true courage lies not in winning battles, but in transcending what one is. The concepts of heroism and death blur in the mind of a girl who only wants to be seen, amid a crumbling family and a country on the brink of collapse.