When her seventeen-year-old son Max grabs a German Lugar to shoot alligators he swears are slithering up their front lawn, Maggie knows she has a problem. Thinking he is on drugs, she seeks help from experts and learns it's worse than she imagined. It's schizophrenia. Despite medications and therapy, Max's life spirals downward, and Maggie tumbles after him, hoping to pull him back to the world of reason. Trapped in a maze of theories and medications, legal and medical opinions, progress and setbacks, Maggie learns that even a mother's love is not enough to help a son in the throes of a devastating mental illness. As Max's world becomes more fragmented, Maggie tries to piece his broken life back together, maintain a normal routine for her younger son, and preserve her own sanity.