Rachel is a perpetually perky housewife who has it all--home, husband, and children. She also loses it all, on the night before Christmas, when she discovers that the creature stirring in her house is a hit man, hired by her husband. Dressed in nothing more than her flannel nightie, Rachel flees, embarking on an odyssey that spans many a Christmas Eve and that will take her through all 50 states of the Union as she searches for some semblance of security, and sanity--and a permanent address. Like a latter-day Candide, Rachel encounters a series of increasingly surreal calamities and coincidences on her journey through denial. She also meets up with a bizarre cast of characters, including a suspicious social worker, his parapalegic deaf mute wife, a homicidal bookkeeper, a manic game show host, an insomniac undergrad, a nun with a dark past, and a skeptical shrink who insists that Rachel's nightmarish life is actually one fantastic Freudian dream.