Omar Razaghi, a twenty-eight-year-old doctoral student at the University of Kansas, has won a grant to write a biography of Jules Gund, a deceased Latin American writer. There's just one obstacle: Gund's family has not given him authorization. Undeterred, Omar travels to Uruguay, unannounced, to petition the author's three executors in person: Gund's widow, his much younger mistress, and his brother. Omar's arrival sets in motion a series of events that upsets the precarious balance of life at Ochos Rios, the family's crumbling estate. As long-standing relationships undergo seismic shifts and force the time-stuck inhabitants of Ochos to look toward that most dreaded of places: the future.