Doris is in the mid and late stages of Alzheimer's. She is living in a group home that's ill-equipped to manage her progressing disease. The staff's efforts to contain her only reinforce her belief that she's being held captive. When she's asked to leave the home, her children struggle to find a new place for her, especially without the help of their father who has seemingly left Doris for another woman.
These conflicts cause Doris to pull memories from another tumultuous time in her life, just after high school in the late fifties and early sixties. She had golden-boy Paul lined up to rescue her from the shameful dysfunction of her home and give her the safety she's sure she wants. Life throws Doris a curve ball when Paul is forced to move away and she gets pregnant by local activist, Carl, who is anything but mainstream.
Through the past, Doris relives an affair with Paul, a separation from Carl, and the scandal that surrounds her living as a single working mother. She soon becomes an accidental feminist as the only woman working on the line in a Ypsilanti, Michigan auto plant. When both men return and offer to save her from the new role she has grown to love, she has to decide if saving is what she really needs.
Past and present events dovetail throughout the novel until all Doris has left are her memories from younger years and the feelings she has for the people who surround her.
