On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. In the aftermath of the fire that follows, the aging nun Sister St. Savior appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his pregnant widow. In early twentieth century Catholic Brooklyn, decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man's brief existence. His suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives across multiple generations, testing the limits and demands of love and sacrifice, forgiveness and forgetfulness.