THE HEART OF ANNIE tells the story of Lilly Roche and Curtis Walker, whose lives have flourished socially and professionally, but who find themselves single through a combination of circumstance, choice, and heartbreak. Lilly's mother passed away when she was a teenager, leaving her to an adolescence spent coping with her father's depression and her brother's ceaseless bullying. The divorce of Curtis' ill-matched parents at age thirteen, and later his own failed engagement, leaves him on emotional cruise control, surfing through dozens of patchwork relationships, unwilling to fully connect. But one fall when Curtis' uncle Bob Walker, dear to both Lilly and Curtis, suffers a heart attack, it brings Curtis from Los Angeles to Lilly's Austin. Their unexpected reconnection-after first meeting as children-shocks them both awake to the desire to pursue love, and more awakened lives for themselves. Lilly begins to find her voice and stand up for herself against her brother. Curtis, at last, puts an end to a casual relationship with his girlfriend, Robin, and taking his first steps in the direction of developing healthier committed relationships, adopts an abandoned German Shepherd. As Lilly and Curtis fall in love and navigate their new relationship, each character has to learn how to drop their defenses and re-examine their role in creating their own historically stagnant narrative. This insight allows Lilly to begin aggressively defining her boundaries with her family and pursue her own desires, while Curtis begins to shed his cynical abandonment of hope and to reimagine himself as a man worthy of a happy ending.