Beth Jenkins, raised in an Irish Catholic family outside Chicago, with her father a retired Chicago cop, would not acknowledge to her family that she was gay, fearing how they would react. She moved to New York, visiting her home occasionally. At Christmas just over three years before the story begins, and against her better judgment, she responds to the when-I-you-going-to-find-a-man question by coming out.

Any hopes of staying are shattered when her father says he will not sit at the same table with this creature. For three years she speaks to neither her parents. Then her sister calls. "Dad is dying. He's turned over a new leaf." She agrees to come, but only with her girlfriend, with whom she is living in Brooklyn.

This is the story of their journey to Beth's home and what happens when she gets there.