What does a middle-aged daughter, Adele, do when her aging, ill mother asks for help in dying, especially when daughter and mother have been edgy antagonists for years? Confronting a frightening death as her lungs fill, the mother, Elizabeth, insists on her right to choose when to die. Adele turns for help to her sister, who rejects euthanasia on religious grounds, and her brother, who tries to get pills, but is trapped in a snowstorm. Adele's daughter, Toni, becomes involved when she asks her grandmother's help with research into heroin smuggling perhaps carried on by people her grandparents knew.