In 1982, Susan Bliss is a beautiful young woman who is passionate about her art. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does --- hopelessly. This leads to an unconventional arrangement that takes Susan back and forth between her life in New England as a wife and mother and the bright lights of Los Angeles, where she becomes the beloved star of a daytime soap. In the present, Susan’s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory. Viola, resentful of Susan’s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother’s old costar, Orson Grey --- now a renowned Hollywood star --- she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew.