After the father of her son leaves her high and dry, Kazuko gives her child up for adoption and takes a job at a hot spring resort, watching her son being raised by the owner of a tea shop.
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.
After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.
Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.