Vera Curran is in love with her own repression. She's a forty-year-old Republican lesbian librarian from a rural county in Virginia who gladly sustains her life by doing the same insipid routine day in and day out. She wakes up, treks through her shelving in the 900's days, and puts milk bones out for the dog each night before curling up to read a book and watch the world through her window.

Vera hasn't had sex in years...and has forgotten exactly why. Then out of nowhere there is a new member of the faculty--Frankie Bourdon--an ex-Navy pilot who left the military to teach high school and to try and change the public school's curriculum by adding homosexual sex education. Before you know it, the two begin to forge a relationship that begins on a simple sticky note. Soon Vera is reminded of exactly what it is that she has been missing in life...