Reeling from a broken engagement, adopted 19-year-old Menina Walker flees to Spain to bury her misery by writing her overdue college thesis on a 16th century Spanish artist. When she discovers that a tiny swallow in the artist's painting is the same one on a medallion that is Menina's only link to her birth family, Menina digs deeper into the swallow's significance and uncovers an adventure involving orphans sent to the New World after the Spanish Inquisition.