A son is tasked with an impossible decision in this poignant, astutely observed portrait of a family in crisis from the author of The Ice Storm While visiting his mother, Billie, who suffers from a degenerative neurological disease that has left her paralyzed and unable to speak, Dexter "Hex" Raitliffe learns that his stepfather, Billie's husband and caretaker, has left her. Alone and incapable of living on her own, Billie makes an unfathomable request...

Thanksgiving 1973. The climate is changing, both politically and physically. As the Watergate scandal unfolds in the background, the inhabitants of a small Connecticut town begin to slip into an existentialist void. Social taboos are shattered on whims and the line between adult authority and juvenile irresponsibility is practically nonexistant. Focuses on the Hood and Carver families. Chronicles a brief period of rapid moral deterioration. Their...