“SEPTEMBER, 1997. I didn’t go home to watch Harry Lee die. I couldn’t imagine wailing at the deathbed, thinking I could heal our relationship. Harry, a guy who survived the Depression, went ashore at Normandy, and claimed to single-handedly push the German hordes back across France. Harry, who’d been pushing back at everyone ever since. He was the kind of guy who, if he didn't think much of you, you didn't think much of you, either. Maybe that's the way all fathers and sons did business in that cash-thumping, Cold War aftermath. Maybe Harry was a one-off demagogue. What did I know? All I had was Harry.”

Harry Lee condemns his son Patrick for a failed marriage and untethered fatherhood. Patrick flies north to his father's funeral, hoping to bury these torments for good.

When Patrick confronts the people he left behind, he contemplates running again. But three-year-old Lauren, his granddaughter, deserves a better life than the drug culture haunted by her addicted mother and a drug dealer boyfriend. Patrick chooses to stay and fight for this child. Despite their rancor, Patrick and his son Seth forge an alliance. While Seth plots to steal his child away, Patrick engages Lauren's mother, Paula, directly. Gayle, the matriarch of this drug culture, offers a pleasant front but lives in shadows. Enter Patrick’s ex-wife Susan, Seth’s mother, who is determined to obstruct father and son in their pursuits, citing their failures with children in the past. None of these entanglements foster hope, but the dead patriarch, Harry, admonishes them from the grave to do something!

HARRY LEE IS DYING careens toward confrontation and the battle of wills turns deadly. There have always been guns in that house, Seth warns, but Patrick must concede his failures and step up.