On her fortieth birthday, housewife Wanda Jo Ashton is expecting her husband’s standard gift of an E and E from T—that being Elegant and Expensive from Tiffany’s. However, what she gets is the news that her formerly successful, dependable, corporate attorney husband is leaving her to pursue the rich life of a kept man.
Left with nothing, she has no choice but to escape the San Francisco area with her sixteen-year-old daughter in tow and head toward the mountains of West Virginia and the embarrassingly quirky family she left behind twenty years ago. Here, Wanda Jo must carve out a future, complete with career and home, in the midst of family feuds, computer phobias, and the occasional home-brewing explosion.
Only the presence of her daughter and a few good friends, including her old buddy Sam Branson, make life bearable at all. Can it be true that the good life begins at forty?