It's the 1950s. The upper middle class Dollangangers - father Christopher Sr., mother Corrine and their four children, teenagers Christopher Jr. and Cathy, and twin adolescents Cory and Carrie - love each other as a family should, although Cathy, who has a special bond with her father, doesn't like the fact that he is away at work so often, which will be even more so with his promotion. Their life changes when Christopher Sr. is killed in an accident. Christopher Sr. and Corrine perpetrated this upper middle class life for their children's sakes. Having lived largely on credit, Corrine, who has no money or job skills, goes searching for friends or relatives who may take them in for the short term. The one offer she receives is from her wealthy and religiously fanatical mother, Olivia, who the children did not even know existed. Upon their arrival at Olivia's house in Virginia, stern and angry Olivia tells the children that they are to stay in a locked room in an isolated section of the house as no one is to know they are there, even the household servants. Olivia will come once a day to bring them food for the day, and the children are to hide in the adjoining attic on the one day of the week the servants come to this section of the house to clean. Corrine tells them they are in hiding because she is estranged from her aged and ailing father, and needs to make amends with him so that he will reinherit her, before she tells him of their existence. This plan should take no more than a week. When a week passes and nothing has changed in the children's lives and their mother's visits become less frequent, the children learn from their mother the rest of the story and the reason for their grandmother's animosity toward them, especially toward Cathy and Christopher, who are coming into their sexual awakening. As time goes on and in their isolation from the rest of the world, the children's lives are affected by what looks to be their mother's burgeoning life outside of their captivity without any regard for them. Cathy and Christopher also become surrogate parents to the twins, and what Olivia predicts will happen may solely out of the circumstance the children are placed in the house rather than due to their heritage.—Huggo