Fed up with her deadbeat grown kids and marginal urban existence, Juanita takes a Greyhound bus to Paper Moon, Montana - where she reinvents herself and finds her mojo.

Good-natured astronomer Sam is devastated when the love of his life leaves him for a suave Frenchman. He therefore does what every other normal dumpee would do — go to New York and set up home in the abandoned building opposite his ex-girlfriend's apartment, wait until she decides to leave her current lover, and then win her back.

In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife's life is upended by a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in society.