The narrator of Anne Tyler's fourteenth novel is Barnaby Gaitlin, the 30-year-old black sheep of a rich Baltimore family. His mother can never forgive him for shaming them when, as a teenager, he broke into the neighbors' homes, reading their mail and stealing small items. His ex-wife Natalie thinks he is a failure as a once-a-month visitor to his nine-year-old daughter Opal. Barnaby muses, "Oh, what makes some people more virtuous than others? Is it something they knew from birth?"
Barnaby does have one thing that gives him pleasure and pride — the 11 years he's worked for Rent-a-Back, a company run by Mrs. Dribble that advertises: "Any load you can't lift, any chore you don't feel up to — call on us." All of his elderly customers think Barnaby is a good hearted fellow. But he still feels incomplete — as if his real life hasn't yet begun.
Then Barnaby meets Sophia, a middle-class woman who works at a bank and thinks he's the cat's meow. Suddenly his plain, uncomplicated existence feels fresh. However, when Sophia's aunt, a new customer of Rent-a-Back, accuses him of theft, Barnaby's rising self-confidence is shattered.
In Anne Tyler's novels, the search for meaning is the Holy Grail sought by her lovable lead characters. Being out of step is okay. In the end, Barnaby finds a way to assert his own virtue and to free himself once and for all of the need to compare himself with those around him. This liberation leads to feeling really grown-up.