Plot summary

While visiting a museum, a group of five troubled youth, on detention, are won over by their tour guide, Mary Beth. Part of what wins them over is the story she tells from the Book of Life, which contains all the stories of the world, both true and made-up. The story she tells centers on the Day of the Dead in San Angel, Mexico - the center of the universe - of three childhood best friends, strong-willed María Posada, Joaquín Mondragon Jr., who likes to show he's a man by sporting a fake mustache without truly knowing what it means to be a man, and guitar-playing Manolo Sánchez, the offspring of the town's general, a deceased military hero and a bullfighter respectively. Even at this age, both Joaquín and Manolo are in love with María, each knowing he would like eventually to marry her. They are separated when María's father sends her to Europe for school to learn to be a lady. By the time María returns to San Angel as a young woman, Joaquín has become a military hero like his father, and Manolo has become a bullfighter like all his Sánchez ancestors, male and female. While Manolo showed his aptitude for bullfighting at a young age, his heart still remains music, singing and playing his guitar, and not with bullfighting. Each still pines for María as his wife. What they are unaware of is that two leaders of the afterlife, estranged wife and husband, La Muerte, ruler of the Land of the Remembered, and Xibalba, ruler of the Land of the Forgotten, long ago made a wager on which of the two will marry María, the outcome which will have a profound effect not only on María, Joaquín and Manolo's joint lives, but the course of San Angel, which is constantly under threat by evil Chakal, and the world. What La Muerte is further unaware of is that Xibalba is taking underhanded measures to win, which also affects María, Joaquín and Manolo's live and possible deaths.—Huggo