People were attracted to the house - and scared at the same time. In his garden grew old walnut trees, which were never allowed to release their fruit in the shell at the time of maturity. For Dluhonické, the St. John's house was cursed. "After all, it is against God," they crossed themselves, "to drop nuts from the branches while they are still unripe... It is like knocking a premature child out of the mother's womb. Sin, only sin!" But Juliana Paukrtová and her son Hanuš and granddaughter Vilemína could not do otherwise. Like all their ancestors, on Saint John they plucked green nuts from all the trees and threw them into barrels.
However, the years 1958 and 1959 will bring dramatic changes. Thirteen-year-old Vilemína has to deal with a new life path, in a single year she has to move from a child's carefree world to the world of adult worries and fight for her place. Is the difficult situation in the family the fault of her mother, Albína, a skilled JZD agitator who is disliked by the locals because of her past, tainted by collaboration with the Nazis? Or is the cursed St. John's house to blame for everything?
Lenka Chalupová's captivating novel loosely follows on from the successful titles Sour Cherries and The Fifth Apple and thus completes the trilogy from post-war Přerovsk.