Tom Hubbard is dead. Iraq war hero, dutiful son and brother, faithful husband. Or was he? The year is 2002, and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars are in their infancy. The military favors policies that keep the truth under wraps: The dead return to the US in secret, while gay soldiers abide by the confines of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In such a milieu, thirty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Tom Hubbard is killed in action and his remains are returned to the small New England town he turned his back on years earlier. Along with a flood of curious townspeople, Tom Hubbard's extended family, boyhood friends and distant lovers gather for a memorial reception hosted by Tom's emotionally unbalanced mother and prickly sister. Set at the Hubbard's 200-year-old farmhouse in Newbury, Massachusetts, the drama unfolds in a single afternoon directly following Tom Hubbard's military burial. In one day, this small town family falls apart and comes back together again in unexpected ways. Long-hidden relationships surface, family secrets are uncovered and the real Tom Hubbard is revealed. New relationships are built—relationships that could not have existed before Tom Hubbard had died and his tumultuous memorial reception had shaken his family to its core.
