After a most unfortunate day at school, burned-out architectural history teacher Michael Fischer goes away for a Columbus Day weekend jaunt to visit his mother and an old high-school friend. He makes a side trip to hunt for the gravestone of a stonemason he has long studied and finds himself on a completely new life journey. The three-day odyssey upends everything he thought was important. And the stone carver's work, which he has so admired, turns out to be much more than a subject of historical interest.