As a college president, Thomas Westerly, 72, was a paragon of virtue, a crusader for everything from civil rights to ecology. Now, as he lies dying surrounded by his children, he asks them to go through his papers and destroy anything deemed embarrassing. The children are stunned by the request.

But as they leaf through his diaries and records, they discover scandals, neuroses and deviance, leaving them to ask just how well we know the people that we love…