The Naumanns of Oakland, California are outwardly a loving, supportive family. Husband and father Saul is a Religious Studies professor who looks to his religious training in Judaism as tenets by which to raise his family and has high expectations for all of them. His midteen son Aaron idolizes his father and does everything to please him. His preteen daughter Eliza often feels neglected. So when Saul learns that Eliza is participating and excelling in spelling bees, she becomes the focus of his life as he believes that letters in the form of words will lead to answers to the universe. That change in focus to Eliza makes Aaron feel neglected now, and he strikes out quietly in his own way with help from Chali, a young woman he meets. But the person who has felt the most pressure within Saul's way of life is his wife Miriam, a microbiologist who converted from Catholicism to Judaism when she and Saul married. But as Saul espouses the concept of tikkun olam, bringing together the shards of the world to make it whole, it affects Miriam negatively in trying to cope with an incident from her childhood. Through it all, Eliza might understand her father's way of life the best, and use it in an unexpected way to bring her family back together.