The Scent of Chrysanthemums

How well do we know each other? What do mothers really know about the secret lives their daughters lead? Do daughters appreciate the lives their mothers lived before they came along? What about friends, our most important relationship next to our families? What do we really know about them? All of us filter the information we receive and decide what to believe and what to reject. Our closest relationships are subject to this sifting of the truth, even more so than the casual contacts of our everyday lives. Here, then, are three women: Nancy Maynard, her daughter Jennifer Scott and social worker Bernadette McGee who becomes Nancy’s unlikely companion in the last years of her life. What they tell each other is the truth, right? Or is it?