Fifty years after Mary Hemingway left Cuba with her husband Ernest, Alf O'Malley, a University of Toronto graduate student, travels to Havana in the company of his pregnant girlfriend Beth, to search for Mary's long-lost article. In the company of their tour guides, Alicia and Jose, they visit Hemingway's home, Finca Vigia, where they find themselves embroiled in a turf war over control of Hemingway's library.

Mary Hemingway in July 1960 begins to write an article for Life magazine covering the tensions of her last seven days in Cuba with husband Ernest Hemingway.