At the time of her death in 1695, Juana Inés de la Cruz was arguably the greatest writer working in any European tongue, yet she had never set foot in Europe. Instead she was born in the shadow of the mountain pass Cortés and his troops descended on their advance to Montezuma's capital. A child prodigy from a barbarous wilderness, her beauty and wit provoked a sensation at the viceregal court in Mexico City. But at the age of nineteen, still a favourite of the court, Juana entered a convent, and from that point her life unfolded between the mystery of her sudden flight from palace to cloister, and the enigma of her final silence, following a vow of contrition signed in blood. After a quarter-century of graceful, often sensuous poetry, plays and theological argument, Sor Juana chose silence, which she maintained until she died of plague at the age of forty-six.
Alongside her story, "Hunger's Brides" weaves in various other narratives, including those of modern-day academics and researchers uncovering Sor Juana's legacy.

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