It is just a few weeks after Christmas, and the unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse. Doyle has dragged his reluctant sons, Tip and Teddy, to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Though his own political career is over, dealt a fatal blow by a family scandal, Doyle is still fired by Jackson's rhetoric and perplexed by his sons' indifference.The two boys, both adopted, are close enough in age to be taken for twins, but in character they couldn't be more different. When they are involved in a violent accident on the treacherously icy road, the family are forced for the first time to confront certain truths: about how the death of Bernadette, Doyle's beloved wife, has affected the family, and about the anonymous figure, never discussed, who is the boys' real mother.