Arthur Alter is in trouble. A middling professor at a Midwestern college, he can´t afford his mortgage, he´s exasperated his new girlfriend, and his kids won´t speak to him. And then there´s the money - the small fortune his late wife Francine kept secret, which she bequeathed directly to his children. Those children are Ethan, an anxious recluse living off his mother´s money on a choice plot of Brooklyn real estate; and Maggie, a would-be do-gooder trying to fashion herself a noble life of self-imposed poverty. On the verge of losing the family home, Arthur invites his children back to St. Louis under the guise of a reconciliation. But in doing so, he unwittingly unleashes a Pandora´s Box of age-old resentments and long-buried memories...