At the turning point of the Iran-Contra affair, Elena McMahon, a fearless investigative journalist covering the 1984 US presidential campaign, puts herself in danger when she abandons her assigned task in order to fulfill the last wish of her ailing father, a mysterious man whose past activities she barely knows.

Yei, an energetic ten-year-old boy, spends his days setting traps for crabs and foraging for gasoline, while trying to keep his desperately ill mother Wanda alive and avoid drunken Alicio who lives with them.