What do we do when the past refuses to let the present move into the future? Five contemporary women find themselves bound in varying degrees to what happened to Eastern European Jews during World War II. Four of the women, all New Yorkers, are second- and third-generation descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. A fifth is a survivor herself. She wants to forget. She didn’t tell her daughter and she refuses to tell her granddaughter even the smallest detail of what happened to her. But the granddaughter needs to know. She feels incomplete, unanchored. She must know about her ancestors who died or continue to battle increasing loss of self. In desperation, she reaches out to strangers. One evening, on a stoop in The Bronx, NY, the strangers come together to help. Humor and fellowship, stories and memories take the women to a place where their metaphorical suitcases can be opened, revealing close-held secrets. The grandmother reclaims her life, and the younger women to varying degrees will find reconciliation with a past that has haunted them.