 The Feast of the Goat begins with the return of Urania to her hometown of Santo Domingo , a city which had been renamed Ciudad Trujillo during Trujillo 's time in power . This storyline is largely introspective and deals with Urania 's memories and her inner turmoil over the events preceding her departure from the Dominican Republic thirty @-@ five years earlier . Urania escaped the crumbling Trujillo regime in 1961 by claiming she planned to study under the tutelage of nuns in Michigan . In the following decades , she becomes a prominent and successful New York lawyer . She finally returns to the Dominican Republic in 1996 , on a whim , and finds herself compelled to confront her father and elements of her past she has long ignored . As Urania speaks to her ailing father , Agustin Cabral , she recalls more and more of the anger and disgust that led to her thirty @-@ five years of silence . Urania retells her father 's descent into political disgrace , and the betrayal that forms the <unk> of both Urania 's storyline and that of Trujillo himself . 
