In 1920s Soviet Russia, a fallen aristocrat, a priest and a con artist search for a treasure of jewels hidden inside one of twelve dining chairs, lost during the revolution.
On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family.
A newlywed couple cancels their honeymoon and returns to the snowy Midwest to make the funeral arrangements for their best man, who died unexpectedly after their ceremony.