Sisters Lady, Vee and Delph share their family's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They love each other fiercely, but being an Alter isn't easy. Bad luck is in their genes, passed down through the generations. In the waning days of 1999, the trio decides it's time to close the circle of the Alter curse. But first, they must write the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making --- one that is inexorably intertwined with that of the 20th century itself.