A financial schemer finds himself in the middle of an international scandal after he becomes a political adviser to the new prime minister of Israel.

Three years after his wife, acclaimed photographer Isabelle Reed, dies in a car crash, Gene keeps everyday life going with his shy teenage son, Conrad. A planned exhibition of Isabelle’s photographs prompts Gene’s older son, Jonah, to return to the house he grew up in – and for the first time in a very long time, the father and the two brothers are living under the same roof.

For Shirin, being part of a perfect Persian family isn’t easy. Acceptance eludes her from all sides: her family doesn’t know she’s bisexual, and her ex-girlfriend, Maxine , can’t understand why she doesn’t tell them. Even the six-year-old boys in her moviemaking class are too ADD to focus on her for more than a second. Following a family announcement of her brother’s betrothal to a parentally approved Iranian prize catch, Shirin embarks on a private rebellion involving a series of pansexual escapades, while trying to decipher what went wrong with Maxine.

A single mother, with dreams of becoming a writer, has a son at the age of 15 in 1965, and goes through a failed marriage with the drug-addicted father.

The story focuses on a middle-school math teacher Olive and her relationship with Henry which spans 25 years over the four parts. It is based on Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.