When Vicki Stowe arrives in Nantucket for the summer with her two young sons, her best friend Melanie and her sister Brenda, she is hoping for peace, rest and comfort. Brenda has just lost her job as a professor; Melanie, has just discovered that she is pregnant and that her husband is having an affair and Vicki herself has been diagnosed with cancer and is facing months of treatment. Although they have the best of intentions the women soon find life in a cramped cottage with only one bathroom not quite the idyll they imagined.