For the first time in a long while, the entire Frye family has gathered in the family's summer home in the Berkshires. Grandmother Josephine Whitaker has always presided over her household with old-fashioned forcefulness, but lately, at 84, has been suffering from a frightening forgetfulness that may be senility. At first, her daughter, Bess Frye, and Bess' four grown children, Anna, Evelyn, Connie and Thayer, try to deny the problem's seriousness, but the signs cannot be ignored - Josephine sometimes converses with her dead husband, and once, when left alone for a few days, she went without eating.