The Feast of the Goat begin 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 become a prominent and successful New York lawyer . She finally return to the Dominican Republic in 1996 , on a whim , and find herself compelled to confront her father and elements of her past she have long ignored . As Urania speak to her ailing father , Agustin Cabral , she recall more and more of the anger and disgust that led to her thirty @-@ five years of silence . Urania retell her father 's descent into political disgrace , and the betrayal that form the crux of both Urania 's storyline and that of Trujillo himself .