Summary
Nora is a poor young woman filled with dreams who lives in the beautiful city of Patzcuaro. Her father and evil stepmother Isaura decide to marry her off to a rich man so that she can have a better life; on her father's deathbed she swears to marry a rich man. After her father dies. Heriberto Reyes begins to harass Nora; when he tries to molest her, she fires a gun at him and lands in jail--with a bad image. His wife Gertrudis has made Nora's life a living hell with help from Nora's ex-boyfriend Alfredo. Practicaly driven out of town, Nora and her stepmother move to Morelia to live with her Aunt Alejandra and her goddaughter Casilda, who is the opposite of what Nora symbolizes like beauty, inside and out. Nora meets the love of her life, Arturo, a pilot when she attempts suicide and he saves her. Over time their love grows, and Nora becomes jealous of women like Gisela, and her aunt's goddaughter Casilda. Gisela's husband Evaristo and Leonardo also admire Nora's beauty like Heriberto did, which makes Casilda jealous because she is in love with Leonardo. Later, Isaura discovers that Casilda isn't really Alejandra's goddaughter, but her REAL daughter. She discovers that Alejandra kept it secret because Casilda's father is Nora's dad. Isaura hides this from Casilda until the day that Isaura poisons her with an apple so Casilda can inherit Alejandra's money and split it with greedy Isaura. On another side of town, Paulina lives with her father and brother, and becomes a journalist for Juan Carlos Orellana, who falls in love with her. These characters' lives cross when Arturo goes to Miami as part of his pilot career and in a chance encounter he accidentally sleeps with Paulina. Meanwhile, Nora discovers she's pregnant and Isaura is furious because she wanted to marry her off to a rich man. Paulina is also pregnant after her encounter with Arturo. Nora and Paulina run into each other different times in their lives and discover that they have the same tastes--even in men. When Arturo tells Nora that Paulina is pregnant by him, Nora gets furious and decides to raise her baby alone; she doesn't even tell Arturo that there will be one. Isaura's rage over Nora's pregnancy drives her to tell Nora, after she gives birth, that her baby died--and she actually switches it with Casilda's, who was born the same night but died because Casilda overdosed on aspirin. Now alone in the world, Nora makes a drastic change in her life: she becomes a cold woman who exploits men for money and gets revenge on those who have wronged her, especially Arturo and Paulina. This was all caused by destiny and evil people who have poisoned her mind. When a charming man, Felix Palacios, enters the picture, they marry and move to Felix's mansion in a remote location not seen on any maps. After Nora decides to never see Arturo again, he marries Paulina, who had their baby the same night Nora and Casilda had theirs, but Arturo thinks sadly of Nora all the time. Paulina also thinks of Nora--she wants her to stay away and will go to drastic limits to keep her away. Underneath it all, Nora still loves Arturo., but she cant love anyone because she considers loving as her sin. After five years, Casilda brings over Alejandrita (Nora's biological child) and they notice that she looks exactly like Nora did as a child--and although she's from a rich family, she is still a pure, sweet little girl. On the other hand, Paulina and Arturo's little Marissa is selfish and spoiled, overindulged by her parents because they felt sorry that she had heart problems. Later, Felix hires a pilot because he bought Nora a private plane: the pilot is ARTURO. When Nora discovers this, she tries to avoid him as much as possible. Toward the end of the story, Isaura kills Paulina with a pair of scissors because she had heard Isaura confess that she switched Nora's and Casilda's babies at birth; Casilda comes out of the institution she was in for having false illusions of her [god]mother, and a lot of Mafia guys kill Felix and all his bodyguards. Leonardo is also killed because he also knew the truth about Nora and Casilda's babies switched at birth, and Casilda leaves Alejandrita with her real mother, Casilda's half-sister Nora, and goes away with a trucker and abandons Isaura in the desert. The next year, Arturo is in church telling Paulina via prayer that their daughter has had surgery that healed her heart problems. Nora sees Arturo for the first time in five years, at the same fountain where they broke up six years before because of Paulina's pregnancy, and they live happily ever after with their two daughters, Marissa and Alejandrita.
