Anna, who has a successful publishing career in the US, is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on holiday in the island of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go the US for treatment, even though it is perhaps her only chance of survival. Anna and her father, who tries to remain respectful of his wife's wishes, must convince her to change her mind.