Victor Tuchman - a power-hungry real estate developer and all-round bad man - is finally on his deathbed. His daughter Alex can finally unearth the secret of who he really was. She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex's unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous married life. Meanwhile Gary, Alex's brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary's wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, bursting into crying fits in drug stores. Each family must figure out a way to move forward - with one another, for themselves and for the sake of their children.