The novel tells the life of Xiao'e, a female prisoner on death row, her three sons and three men, three marriages and three life and death experiences. The story uses segmented flashbacks to tell the story of Xiao'e who escaped from domestic violence in her first marriage and entered her second marriage, but accidentally killed her second husband with her own hands. She was sentenced to death, and again a few years later. She spent twenty years in prison but never saw her three sons. As a mother, Xiao'e owed her children too much, and this was what she couldn't let go of. After she was released from prison, not long after she married a third man, the man died unexpectedly at work, and Xiao'e's life was once again in trouble. All of this had been predicted by the inmates who were able to figure things out. Looking back on everything in her life, Xiao'e knew that everything in her life was doomed.
