Janet "Shady" Shahadi's life doesn't start out well. When Shady, the daughter of an Arab father and Irish mother, is fourteen months old, her mother decides to give her away, bundles her up, and has a cab driver deliver Shady to her father's cigar store. Shady grows up in alternately nurturing and abusive environments, and when she is older, Shady is told her mother is dead.

After a disastrous marriage and numerous affairs and fly-by-night relationships, Shady falls in love with Bobby Summerville, a black law student and sixties-generation civil rights activist. Bobby deepens Shady's knowledge of the world and of herself, but the lovers clash at every turn and eventually break up. Shady is devastated, but she finds solace with other men.

When she visits a palm reader who tells her that her life story will be made into a book, Shady is skeptical. But when Shady advertises her services as a freelance typist, she meets the woman who will soon become her biographer. As Shady types her story, she is forced to confront her painful past-and start down the path to healing.