At age 33, in search of a man, a second novel and a life, Manhattan writer Rebekah Kettle occupies the singleton's circle of hell. Having defaulted on her book contract, she's reduced to working as a physician's assistant for her eccentric dad, her only meaningful relationship with a senile old woman with whom she wallows in Little House on the Prairie reruns. And she's plagued by a bitchy, big-breasted gossip columnist who wants her to blurb her book. One bright spot: her brain tumor isn't fatal. The unlikely catalyst for Rebekah's recovery is her obsession with Woody Allenesque director Arthur Weeman. She begins dating a sympatico young Weeman look-alike and rekindles her creative spark by writing the filmmaker flirty letters in the voice of a 12-year-old girl. When she spies Weeman in a compromising position, she reexamines her own romantic history with much older men, beginning with her middle-school defloration and subsequent abortion.