November 2, 1938 — the Day of the Dead — is the day Geoffrey Firmin, the British Consul in the Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, drinks himself to death while his ex-wife Yvonne, who has returned hoping to save him, reaches out one last time. Lowry's twelve chapters cover twelve hours of the Consul's last day in the shadow of two volcanoes, each hour saturated with the Mexican holiday's preoccupation with death, beauty, and the impossibility of escape.