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Psychologist Vanda Berková has heard hundreds of stories during her practice - sad, happy, seemingly impossible, but also tragic. She introduces us to six people who have revealed their fate to her... and it doesn't just get under their skin, but down to their very bones, literally down to their blood. She returns them in the narrative to the BEGINNING of their life story, and in doing so gets to the heart of the problem that led them to her office. The stories of four women and two men probe into the everyday workings of seemingly ordinary families - and Vanda slowly exposes the wounds so that she can play a part in healing them.

The main characters of THE BEGINNING let the reader into their souls, emotions and feelings. As a newborn, Inka was left in a margarine box at the door of the Přerov maternity hospital... and she only had a note with a phone number for her biological father. Halina was marked by the story of a reclusive mother who closed herself in her own world - in a secluded place above Děčín. Boris is burdened by his grandparents who failed to accept their Russian son-in-law, and he suffers the consequences of the tragedy his grandfather reveals to him on his deathbed. Jolana, the lover of a married man, learns of a deception at the end of her life, which brings her to her knees... and she must come to terms with her childhood "sin". Frederika has not mastered her old desire to control people like puppets - like the ones she was taught to lead in her childhood at the puppet theatre in Přerov. And Matthew lives a trouble-free life; that is, until one spring when his daughter introduces him to a new friend who will forever interfere in the family's life.