A self-imagined free spirit, Janice Huntington endures her days at Suzanne's Newsclipping Service sifting through mountains of information on a never-ending series of quests for proverbial needles in haystacks. On her own time, she navigates an equally unending series of sexual encounters in a search for who knows what. The frantic, lonely routine of her life begins to unravel as a casual inquiry into the fate of the inventor of her favorite form of birth control propels her into a series of adventures involving a wayward priest, a murdered prostitute, a precocious child, and an eccentric balloonist that finally give her a glimpse of what might be the solution to her inner puzzle... but the truth is not always pretty.