Shep Knacker discovered long ago that the same money that lasts one year in Westchester lasts ten in the Developing World. That lesson has guided him towards fulfilling the dream he calls “The Afterlife.” Traffic jams on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway will be replaced with days of “talking, thinking, seeing and being”and enough sleep. When he sells the home-repair business he built from scratch for a cool $1 million, his dream finally seems within reach.
Yet instead of The Afterlife, Shep is stuck in the present one, thanks to the footdragging of his wife, Glynis. With no exit date in sight, the 48-year-old Shep reluctantly returns as an employee to the company he founded. Angry and humiliated, he gives Glynis an ultimatum: he’s leaving for Tanzania, with or without her.
Glynis, too, has news: she has cancer. Shep cannot abandon her now; in addition to his love and support, she needs his health insurance. But this “health insurance
company from hell” only partially covers the staggering bills, and suddenly this once well-off family is hurtling toward bankruptcy.