Maidie's mother has been missing since 1974. When Maidie left her childhood home in the name of Self-Improvement - to make a better life - she left behind a father, two sisters, and an ex-stepmother. She hasn't seen any of them for eleven years. Maidie has one ex-husband in Nebraska and another in Virginia, as well as a host of former neighbors and co-workers who occupy her memory like a Greek chorus. Her psychic baggage alone could fill up a large-size moving van.

Just when Maidie is ready to wrench herself free from her latest gig - a job as a curator of Tucson's Museum of Domestic History and Home Economy, a devoted boyfriend, and a cluster of admiring friends - fate intervenes, allowing her the option of rejecting or embracing her disconnected, interrupted past. In Newfangled, a woman who's afraid of knowing anyone very well for very long suddenly finds herself imagining what life would be like if she were to take a chance, to stay.