Living in Jerusalem, Elise Margulies always fears for the lives of her husband, cancer specialist Dr. Jonathan Margulies, and their daughter, Ilana. Then comes the day when Jon and Ilana fail to return home from her ballet recital. His bullet-ridden car is found empty on the side of the road hours later. Elise, in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy, desperately calls her grandmother Leah in America for help and unknowingly revives a decades-old oath that transcends both time and place.