Gabriel Santoro is a journalist and non-fiction essayist whose fictitious book, A Life in Exile, tells of a close friend, Sara Guterman, and her story escaping from Nazi Germany to Colombia during the Holocaust. The slowly, Gabriel suspects that there are a few things about the story that he doesn't quite know, or doesn't yet understand.
Gabriel and his father (Gabriel, Sr) are in a hospital. The father is about to have a serious heart operation, so Gabriel is there to support him, but they haven't talked in years—ever since that book came out, because Gabriel's dad published a scrutinizing review of it upon its release, even though it was his own son's book. In a word, the father said the book was "exploitative."
The conversation unfolds, and we learn that the father is rather hateful toward journalism in general. He also criticizes his son's book for being judgmental, because he feels that his son took a moral high ground in the book.
The father gets the operation and recovers. Along the way, he makes friends with a physical therapist that quickly turns into an affair. In the heat of romance, the father tells his mistress about his past. It turns out, he was a government informant.
Then the father dies, and the therapist goes on public media to tell the world about his confession. In light of this new shameful realization, the father's legacy is tarnished, and in the course of events, an unfair court ruling is overturned as a result of the father's honesty.
