A World Away opens at a remote beachfront cottage in the Hamptons one summer during the Second World War. It is here that James and Anne Langer and their younger son, Jay, have moved to care for James's aging father and to await word from their older son, Rennie, fighting somewhere in the Pacific. As we soon realize, there is another battle raging, this one on the domestic front, as the Langers' marriage begins to unravel.