Plot

An editor offers actress/bartender Reese $100,000 for her late mom's letters from her novelist dad. She heads home from NYC to get them and finds her dad living in the garage while two strangers live in the house.

Actress Reese Holden has been offered a small fortune by a book editor if she can secure for publication the love letters that her father, a reclusive novelist, wrote to her mother, who has recently passed away. Returning to Michigan, Reese finds that an ex-grad student and a would-be musician have moved in with her father, who cares more about his new friends than he does about his own health and well-being.—IMDb Editors

Reese Holdin (Zooey Deschanel) is a depressed bartender/actress living in New York City. She typically gets rejected at auditions due to her negative personality and depressing world outlook. She gets bit roles in local theatre products which are barely enough to pay her bills. Deirdre (Deirdre O'Connell) casts Reese in her productions as she considers Reese a friend, but now the production is coming to a close and Reese will soon be out of work again.

She regularly engages in casual sex, cocaine use, and self-mutilation. When a publishing agent Lori Lansky (Amy Madigan) approaches her, we learn that Reese is the daughter of a famous author named Don Holdin (Ed Harris); and that her mother, Mary (Mary Jo Deschanel), recently died. Reese did not attend the funeral. Lori says that she is sure that Don is working on a book, as he sent 2 chapters to a publisher. Reese counters that this was a few years ago and that the chapters were not very good. Reese says that Don has not written anything for several years now.

The publisher offers the impecunious Reese $100,000 for a series of letters written between her mother and father at the height of their careers. This was back in the day before they got married. Don was writing a book in the South of France, and Mary was working in the states. Lori had a xerox of one of the letters that she got through Reese's uncle Richard, whom she met at Mary's funeral. Lori says that there are 150 pairs of letters. She offers half the money on delivery of the letters and the other half on publication.

When Reese learns that the kitten she rescued from the streets is dying of feline leukemia, she drowns it and buys a bus ticket to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to retrieve the letters. Reese gets Lori to give her some cash upfront to travel to her hometown, food and other incidentals. Reese says that she is afraid of flying and does not give Lori a time-line on when she would be back in the city.

Despite family tensions, Reese travels to her home retrieve the letters. Returning to her childhood home, she finds it occupied by Corbit (Will Ferrell), a down-and-out Christian musician, and Shelley (Amelia Warner), a 23-year-old former student of Don's. Reese's father now lives, writes and drinks in his garage.

The garage is super cluttered, and Don sleeps on a couch. Don is surprised to see Reese walk through the door. Reese is not particularly close to Don and the there is a certain coldness to their relationship. Don is taking medicines to sleep. He believes that Reese has come to meet him as she is in trouble and needs money. Don says that Reese's mother was cremated, and not buried and Uncle Richard took her ashes back to her hometown. Don says that he offered Shelley to stay at her house as she needed to get away from things for a while. Don says that he stopped teaching a few semesters ago as he got tired.

The staircase of the house is full of stacks of Don's old books and the walls are full of awards that he won at the height of his career. Corbit participates in Don's quirks. For e.g. they have converted one vacant room into a golf room, where Don practices hitting golf balls, while wearing home made body protecting gear to save themselves from the ricochets. The room used to belong to Mary and Reese finds that Don has put her bed in the backyard, out in the open.

Reese initially clashes with the doting Shelley (whom she accuses of sleeping with her father) but eventually accepts her after learning of the death of her parents and of Don's support of her during a near-fatal bout with Endometriosis (a chronic gynecological disease where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside of the uterus. This can cause severe pelvic pain and make it harder to get pregnant).

She also bonds with the idiosyncratic Corbit, who spurns her sexual advances and has trouble playing guitar and singing at the same time. She feels out of place at home and fights with her father over childhood neglect, stating that her parents gave their typewriters more attention. She eventually finds the box of letters and, reading the emotional communiques, learns to empathize with her estranged parents. Shelly has also read the letters and asks Reese if she intends to publish them. Reese expresses ambiguity over the matter.

Don Holdin is still grieving over his wife's death. He keeps the tie she hanged herself with in a dresser in the backyard along with the rest of their bedroom suite, including their bed. He sometimes sleeps in the bed despite the bitter cold of winter. Reese starts to connect with Corbit and Shelly and is honest with her father about her reasons for staying away from the funeral. Soon after, Don overdoses on pills, and Reese finds him unconscious.

He recovers in the hospital, where Reese sits by his bed and reads his latest manuscript, Golf, which he had Corbit bury in the yard. The experience helps the father and daughter find closure, and Reese buries the box of letters in place of the novel before returning to New York.