For Karen Kipple, it isn't enough that she works full-time in the non-profit sector for an organization that helps children from disadvantaged homes. She's also determined to live her personal life in accordance with her ideals. This means sending her daughter, Ruby, to an integrated public school in their Brooklyn neighborhood. But when a troubled student from a nearby housing project begins bullying children in Ruby's class, the distant social and economic issues Karen has always claimed to care about so passionately begin to feel uncomfortably close to home.

For nearly 40 years, the Hellinger sisters have played the roles set down by their loving yet domineering mother. Each woman is unable to believe that anyone could understand what it's like to be her. But when a freak accident lands their mother in the hospital, a chain of events is set in motion that will send each Hellinger sister rocketing out of her comfort zone, leaving her to wonder: was this the role she was truly born to play?