North to Home

The film begins in Alaska, where Posy McBride, a mountain rescue volunteer, is training her dog Maxie. She lives with her adoptive parents, Suzanne and Stewart, and works at their family cafe, though she secretly dreams of climbing the great peaks of Europe. Her sisters are traveling home for Suzanne's 60th birthday: Hannah, a high-powered financial analyst from NYC who is secretly pregnant and hiding it from her husband Adam, and Beth, a stay-at-home mother from New Jersey who is being lured back into the workforce by a manipulative former boss. The sisters' reunion is immediately strained by their differing lifestyles; Hannah is obsessed with a work proposal, and Beth is overwhelmed by her children and her husband Jason's confusion over her career desires. While in town, Posy develops a romantic connection with Luke, a travel writer renting the family's guest house. The sisters' shared history is brought to the forefront when they find an old VHS tape of their biological parents, reminding them that Suzanne's birthday is also the anniversary of the avalanche on Denali that killed their birth parents and another couple. Tensions peak during the local 'Lumberjack Games' and a disastrous attempt by Hannah to babysit Beth's daughters, which ends in a frosting-covered mess and a heated argument about Hannah's emotional distance and Beth's overprotectiveness. The central conflict reaches a climax during Suzanne's birthday dinner when Hannah realizes that 'Luke Whitaker' is actually Luke Palmer, the son of the other couple who died in the avalanche twenty-five years ago. Luke admits he came to Alaska to research a book on survival and closure but fell in love with Posy and the family. Though initially felt as a betrayal, Luke's presence allows Suzanne to finally forgive herself for the accident, as she was the guide on that fateful day. The film resolves with the sisters reconciling their differences: Hannah reveals her pregnancy to Adam, Beth decides to pursue a career on her own terms with Hannah's help, and Posy receives Suzanne's blessing to leave the cafe and travel to Switzerland with Luke. The family celebrates a 'Birthday 2.0,' finally free from the shadow of their past.