Helen Moran is thirty-two years old, single, childless, college-educated and employed part-time as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She's accepting a delivery from IKEA in her shared studio apratment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen's adoptive brother is dead. Helen knows what she must do, and purchases a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, as she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother's few friends and the overzealous grief counsellor, Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.