Elizabeth Zott came from a broken family. When her religious parents couldn’t accept the fact that her brother was gay, her brother killed himself. Later, Elizabeth’s father accidentally killed 3 people when he set off an explosion (to try to stage a “miracle” to get people to convert), so he went to jail. Then, her mother left for Brazil (because fewer taxes) and got remarried.
Elizabeth loves chemistry, so she wanted a PhD in it. However, days before she graduated with her Masters, her professor tried to rape her. In self-defense, she stabbed him with a pencil. Later, the entire university believed that the respected professor was innocent and that Elizabeth made the story up. So, she got barred from the PhD program. The only research lab that offered Elizabeth a job was Hastings Lab.
At Hastings, the celebrity researcher was Calvin Evans. Calvin and Elizabeth butt heads at first, but then they fall in love. He convinces Elizabeth to give rowing a try, which she eventually picks up. The two decide that they don’t want kids, so they use contraception and adopt a stray dog instead (Six-Thirty, who was kicked out of military training because even though he could identify bombs, he ran away from them instead of dismantling them).
One morning, Calvin has an accident. He was taking Six-Thirty for a walk, but there was a firecracker that scared Six-Thirty. Six-Thirty ran one way, and Calvin ran the other. Because they were attached with a leash (at Elizabeth’s request), the force knocked down Calvin and he bumped his head. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then got run over by a car, so he died.
Elizabeth realizes that she’s pregnant, so she has a piece of Calvin with her. Because this child was conceived out of wedlock, people shun Elizabeth. She even loses her job at Hastings to cover up the “scandal”. Because people still need her help with their projects, they come visit her at her house, and she charges them for her opinion. She gets by with whatever meager earnings she can make.
When Elizabeth realizes that she’s in over her head with raising her child alone, her neighbor (Harriet) is eager to help. Harriet is Catholic and miserably married to an ugly, arrogant, disrespectful man who sometimes abuses her. However, she refuses to divorce him because that goes against the Catholic Church. All her kids are full-grown, so Harriet felt like she’s lost her sense of purpose until Elizabeth asked for help with her child (Madeline).
When Madeline grows up to be in middle school, she becomes an outcast. She asks the teachers smart-aleck questions and is socially awkward. Her only friend is Amanda Pine, whose parents are divorced. Amanda lives with her father, who is so consumed with his job as a producer that he packs Amanda unconventional lunches, such as booze and a hairdryer. So Madeline gives her carefully-constructed lunches to Amanda, but this upsets Elizabeth, since Elizabeth wants Madeline to get the optimal diet. When Elizabeth confronts Mr. Pine, Mr. Pine gets the idea that Elizabeth could be the solution to his open TV time slot. Elizabeth accepts the offer to be a TV cook only because it pays decent money.
Elizabeth stubbornly refuses to go along with the producers’ wishes if she doesn’t believe in them. For example, when they wanted her to promote a soup that was full of preservatives, she outright told the audience to avoid it. She also tries to incorporate chemistry lessons to the recipes, such as using the scientific name of ingredients (“sodium bicarbonate” for baking soda) to make the women feel competent and capable:
“Today we’re going to study three different types of chemical bonds: ionic, covalent, and hydrogen. Why learn about bonds? Because when you do you will grasp the very foundation of life. Plus, your cakes will rise. …Ionic is the ‘opposites attract’ chemical bond… For instance, let’s say you wrote your PhD thesis on free market economics, but your husband rotates tires for a living. You love each other, but he’s probably not interested in hearing about the invisible hand. And who can blame him, because you know the invisible hand is libertarian garbage. …The point is, you and your husband are completely different and yet you still have a strong connection. That’s fine. It’s also ionic. …Or perhaps your marriage is more of a covalent bond… And if so, lucky you, because that means you both have strengths that, when combined, create something even better. For example, when hydrogen and oxygen combine, what do we get? Water -- or H2O as it’s more commonly known. In many respects, the covalent bond is not unlike a party -- one that’s made better thanks to the pie you made and the wine he brought. Unless you don’t like parties -- I don’t -- in which case you could also think of a covalent bond as a small European country, say Switzerland. ‘Alps’, she quickly wrote on the easel, ‘+ Strong Economy = Everybody Wants to Live There’. …That brings us to the third bond… the hydrogen bond -- the most fragile, delicate bond of all. I call this the ‘love at first sight’ bond because both parties are drawn to each other based solely on visual information: you like his smile, he likes your hair. But then you talk and discover he’s a closet Nazi and thinks women complain too much. Poof. Just like that the delicate bond is broken” 252-253).
Throughout the book, some loose ties get tied up, such as:
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A lady in the live studio audience who was part of some extreme religious group tried to release a bomb during a taping. Six-Thirty sniffed it out and courageously stole the lady’s purse to save the day (even though he previously was too afraid of bombs).
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Calvin’s pen pal (a priest) who had stopped writing to Calvin crosses paths with Madeline after Calvin’s death and learns more about Calvin’s background (such as how he lived in a corrupt Catholic orphanage as a child).
Eventually:
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Harriet finally divorces her husband and starts a relationship with Mr. Pine.
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Thanks to Calvin’s real dad donating a ton of money to Hastings, a lot of the corrupt males there get fired and Elizabeth gets rehired as a lead researcher.