"Josie Henderson is most at home in and around water, and as a senior-level black female scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she is practically alone in her field. But in building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family roots back in Cleveland. When Tick, her brother and childhood ally against their alcoholic father, arrives on her doorstep fresh from rehab and teetering on the...

Three generations of African-American women--Tamara, her mother Angela, and her grandmother Mildred--find their lives and destinies linked across time by the power and influence of the movies, from the 1920s to the present day.