In 1956 suburban Chicago, Vivian Jacobson, an overwhelmed mother of four, is distraught to be pregnant again. When she begs her doctor for an abortion, he refers her to an illegal practitioner. Her husband Mel, a Jewish WWII veteran working in his family's Maxwell Street tavern, reluctantly agrees. Accompanied by her bossy older sister, Vivian goes to the abortionist's storefront but panics and insists he halt the procedure. As she flees, the man warns that she must return within one week, or else it will be too late. Over the next seven days, while Vivian grapples with this weighty decision, she learns a series of staggering truths about her immigrant mother's past that shake her to her core. With her future and the future of her family hanging in the balance, Vivian will search inside and out for the answers she needs to make her choice - even when they come from the most unlikely of sources: herself.