All in one day, thirty-five-year-old Hallie Marsh learns that the man she loves, works for, and is living with has found someone else—and that she no longer has a job, a place to live, or a car since she crashed it into a hedge. Her feelings of rage and desire for revenge are soon replaced by a fascination with her new neighbors and her desire to write a book about these four peculiar, elderly people who decide to buy an old run-down estate, fix it up, and live in it "just like family."