Merritt Fowler is a natural caretaker. Ever since her mother died when Merritt was three, she's been taking care of her the people in her life. First it was her grieving father and her headstrong younger sister, Laura, then her husband Pom, her destructive and malevolent mother-in-law, Mommee, and her anorexic young daughter, Glynn. With so much caretaking going on, Merritt has little time left over for herself and her own needs. Exhausted and confused, she no longer knows who she is, or what is important to her. But she knows the situation in her household has come to a crisis. In the throes of Alzheimer's, Mommee's behavior has become downright dangerous, and Pom's insistence that she be cared for at home has driven a wedge between Glynn and her parents. When the crisis reaches a boiling point, and Glynn runs away from her Atlanta home to stay with her Aunt Laura, now an actress in Hollywood, Merritt feels compelled to follow. Glynn is awed by Laura's seemingly glamorous Hollywood connections and Merritt feels her control over her daughter slipping even further away. On impulse, the three women take off in Laura's Mustang convertible up the coast to a remote hideaway in the Santa Cruz mountains outside San Francisco, earthquake country. There, in the protective shade of the great redwoods, Merritt, Glynn and Laura struggle to see if the widening fissures between mother, daughter and sister can be healed. When the strange, hermit-like caretaker of their hideaway, T.C. Bridgewater, begins to introduce Merritt to the beauty and power of earthquakes, she feels her old identity slipping away, and a whole new Merritt emerging. With the ground shifting beneath her feet, literally and metaphorically, Merritt must redefine herself and her relationships with all the people she loves, before it's too late.