Three passengers from different backgrounds board a cruise ship shortly after 9/11 and discover they can’t outrun their regrets about risks not taken.

It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Although they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it’s surreal, even wrong, to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.

Also on board is Doug, an ageing actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata.

Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise at a time when tech companies are trying to hire her.

All the World Can Hold explores how we balance our needs, our wants, and regrets. While the great world spins, interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.