Glen Murdoch is a seventy-year-old widower living by himself in Des Moines, Washington during the early part of the twenty-first century. As a retired accounting instructor from a local community college, he enjoys an orderly and routine existence: morning coffee with friends at Carter's Market, a regular schedule of meals, household chores, trips to the store, and television programming. Everything in Glen's life is comfortably familiar, predictable, and a bit boring. One stormy spring morning, however, Glen's somewhat uninteresting life takes a 180 degree turn when he meets, by chance, down-on-her-luck Spirit Smith and Spirit's baby daughter, Aha. This chance encounter leads Glen, Spirit, Aha, and Pamela Redding, a much more-worldly latecomer to the morning gathering of "Carter's Market Regulars," on an exciting journey of self-discovery as they all expand their personal horizons.