Jenny Brown has three simple wishes: to enjoy a happy marriage, to have a job she loves, and to be reunited with her birth mother. But her wishes don't seem to be coming true. After moving from academic Cambridge to suburban San Diego, Jenny finds her biologist husband more interested in his transgenic mice than in her. She's fired from her steady job at the bank, she can't locate her biological mother, and she's even given up on trying to become a mother herself.

Just when Jenny's life seems most out of whack, she stumbles onto the Institute of Affirmation, a quirky adult education center where every idea is a good one. With oddball courses such as Drawing Blindfolded, Home Cooking for Pets, and Bad Habits Support Group, the institute doesn't appear to be Jenny's kind of place. Yet she finds herself returning to the school again and again. Could it be that the Institute of Affirmation with its disarming director, Michael, has something she needs after all?