Marcia Kleinman has a difficult husband, a difficult mother and a little boy, Max, who has a rare chronic liver disease that will eventually require a liver transplantation. A talented pianist, Marcia resisted strong urgings from her teachers and, especially, from her mother to develop a concert career and, instead, has been content to teach music at the college level. Marcia's mother was a well known concert pianist. Marcia's husband, Michael, is a young, aggressive attorney at a major, multicity firm who was transferred to the Los Angeles office from New York. When Max, their son, becomes ill they are presented with difficult choices that include allowing Marcia to donate a portion of her own liver ("living donor"). Michael is initially opposed to this choice and would prefer to wait until an appropriate liver becomes available from another child of Max's approximate age and size who has suddenly died ("cadaveric donor"). During the months during which Max's condition slowly worsens Marcia seeks relief from stress by deciding to learn Beethoven's "Appassionata" piano sonata, a piece that her mother recorded but that Marcia had not been able to master in the past. When she was a teenager Marcia visited southern California and came to love it. When Michael is offered a promotion and partnership in the law firm, if he returns to the New York office, their marriage is further stressed by Michael's resistance to Marcia being a donor, by his controlling nature, and by Marcia's reluctance to leave Los Angeles and her close friends.