Argentina, the 1970s.The unions are overwhelmed by the radical left, and the CEO of a steel plant dies after falling from the helicopter he was travelling in. The briefcase full of money he had with him disappears without trace. The theories about his death are multiplying, as are those on what the money was for. Doing business with union reps? Corrupting them? Financing the illegal repression that will end up destroying them? The novel is about this dark episode and uses this key dramatic element á la Costa Gavras to examine the role of money in this novel about families. The narrator's father 'makes' money at poker tables and in casinos and is in his element in the dens of financial speculation; his mother squanders the small fortune she has inherited on a lavish lifestyle and a summer house that is growing out of control and he, meanwhile, is paying for it.