A meteor shower lights up the winter sky over a rural Vermont community, illuminating the lives of three disparate families. Sgt. Claire Rodman (Ed Blunt) has returned from Iraq, his mind grappling with the meaning of his permanent hand injuries. His sister dutifully cares for their dying mother. St. Claire"s selfish grief and anger comes between the siblings, compounding the Rodman family"s despondency. Housekeeper Kathy McClellan struggles with her grown children, Carissa, and Glen, but Glen"s paranoid delusions about war contains an explosive secret. The life of Nan (Dorothy Lyman), a neighboring farmer and writer, and her partner"s Sandra (Dey Young), is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Sandra"s daughter, Enid, a young woman disoriented after an encounter with the light. The Northern Kingdom brings these families together to examine loss, ordinary and dramatic, and the way nature can resolve sorrow, even in the depths of winter.