After his father's death, a young man leaves law school and rents a small apartment in the attic of a Lisbon mansion for the purpose of writing a novel. There lives the Peralta Perestrêllo family, whose centenary matriarch - D. Consolação, long bedridden - is visited on May 13, 2017 by the appearance of Sister Lucy, after which she can get up and take a few steps.

Son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren are hesitant to believe the supposed miracle; but each in his own way (and also the Church, called immediately to assess the situation) finds out how to make dividends out of the episode - as in the case with the young writer who, with no ideas for his debut novel, suddenly has a lode at his disposal, not to mention his interest in the younger granddaughter of D. Consolação…

But, among the apparitions, will the widow's depression, the secular history of the palace, and the Peralta family's past and present, which is not recommended, even write a page?

Filled with humor (but also criticism and even some accusations), Dead Bodies on My Back is an admirable novel about Portugal (and the Portuguese mentality) that, despite the 21st-century, has not yet managed to heal many of the wounds of the past.