Teddy - open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer - thinks he has found his calling in the Catholic Church. The older by a year, Tip is more serious, reserving his own passionate interest for ichthyology: he is happiest alone in the warmth of his lab, labelling and categorising fish specimens.

It is just a few weeks after Christmas, and the unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse. Doyle has dragged his reluctant sons, Tip and Teddy, to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Though his own political career is over, dealt a fatal blow by a family scandal, Doyle is still fired by Jackson's rhetoric and perplexed by his sons' indifference. twins, but in character they couldn't be more different. Teddy - open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer - thinks he has found his calling in the Catholic Church. The older by a year, Tip is more serious, reserving his own passionate interest for ichthyology: he is happiest alone in the warmth of his lab, labelling and categorising fish specimens. When they are involved in a violent accident on the treacherously icy road, the Doyles are forced for the first time to confront certain truths: about how the death of Bernadette, Doyle's beloved wife, has affected the family, and about the anonymous figure, never discussed, who is the boys' real mother.