Maria Astorini, once a popular character actress and a late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a pandemic. Now, she’s back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age 65, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It’s her publisher asking, “Where is that book?” In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant and insignificant moments of her full, funny and extraordinarily unpredictable life.

Kathleen Deane’s husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage. With Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thoughts lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year. It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie’s letters. Worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen’s absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in the fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairy tale, but it just might be exactly what she needs.