January 1, 2000 (leap year), 224th year of American Independence, in the city and environs of New York.

Louise Moffett teeters in stiletto heels through her confetti-littered loft, lamenting the details of her disastrous millennium bash and the heartbreaking fallout that accompanies her entry into the new century. Across town, her lover, Artie, awakens with a hangover and the cloudy memory of a botched marriage proposal the night before. So begins A Lover's Almanac, a romantic, thinking-person's love story about fate -- how and why we live the lives we do and fall in love with the people we do.

The lapsed lovers are two thirty-somethings in New York City. Louise, a Midwestern farm girl, is a hot artist. Artie, an orphan raised by his grandfather after the death of his hippie mother, is a hapless computer wizard. As we follow their romance, we draw back to learn about their parents' and grandparents' lives, about the events, public and private, that have affected their fates. At intervals, we turn from the characters' stories to consider the lives of the geniuses who have so profoundly affected our society: Edison, Einstein, Franklin, and other creative thinkers of the past. In this "broad meditation on Western thought" (Los Angeles Times), Howard asks: How do we make our own histories -- and how do we connect to history writ large? To what extent do we control our destinies? As we plumb the depths of Maureen Howard's lush prose to discern the curious, looping narrative strands at the novel's heart, we find a witty, moving, and brilliantly simple love story. In the grander sense, as we ponder the fate of the characters in light of the novel's intricate historical backdrop, "a modern version of the great panoramas of the past" (The New York Times Book Review) is revealed, one that braids love, memory, and fate into a rich tapestry encompassing all our histories.