A kind and intellectual family beloved by their devout community, the Kippsons have weathered hardships before, having been through their mother's first cancer diagnosis years earlier. But when Joanne's cancer returns, past grievances start to surface. As Joanne begins the debilitating rounds of treatment, and as Henry, the father, maintains work as a physician, their two youngest children--Mara, a studious philosophy major, and Sam, an eager, soon-to-be driver--struggle to balance the pressures of school and caregiving, while Claire, the eldest child who lives far away, becomes torn between her inability to conform to the community in which she was raised and her responsibility to her family, forcing her to confront a deeper struggle within herself and threatening the only existence she's ever known. Seen through the eyes of a young-adult caregiver, Blue Balloons is an honest, unabashed portrayal of a family struggling to navigate the joys and sorrows of their tender life together.