Erica McIntyre lives a privileged life in an affluent suburb of upstate New York. Her father is a respected pediatric neurosurgeon, and her mother owns a fashionable boutique in the village. The lives of Erica and her mother, Beverly, are changed forever when Dr. McIntyre dies suddenly on the first day of Erica's junior year of high school. On that very day, Erica meets Dwight Washington, an African-American student who transfers to her school, as a participant in the Urban-Suburban Program.
Dwight lives in the inner city with his mother and twin sisters. Ruby, his mother, struggles as one of the working poor. She is a single parent working full-time and going to school. She desperately wants to improve life for herself and her children. Dwight, whose own father is no longer a part of his life because of incarceration, is able to relate to Erica in ways her other friends cannot. They fall in love, despite the initial disapproval of their mothers. Beverly is overwhelmed by the new challenges in her life.
She is suddenly a widow at age 44, a single parent, and forced to accept her daughter's new relationship and blooming sexuality. Beverly reluctantly finds a new love of her own. Is Brad Williams merely a replacement for her dead husband? She doesn't think that her life could possibly get any more complicated, but of course, it does. Beverly and Erica discover that their unexpected new relationships give them what they need to survive that first tumultuous year of their grief.