Cannie is happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable—knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy’s drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.

As preparations for Joy’s bar mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie’s world. Then Joy discovers the sexy and provocative novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception—the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.