"Richard owns a second-hand store ("Satori Junk") just outside Detroit. He's the kind of guy for whom not much happens, until it happens all at once: His mother dies. He rummages his parents' basement for good junk and finds (alongside "every purse my mother has ever owned since the fifties") a box of photos that changes his view of everything. He falls apart over his mother's notes on his favorite meal in an old cookbook.

He meets Theresa, a fellow hipster, a thrift-attired junk goddess who shares his feeling for castaways, and he falls for her - hard. Along the way he acquires some junk wisdom about love and loss."--BOOK JACKET.