The following edition of the text was used in the creation of this study guide: Yee, Katie. Maggie; Or A Man and A Woman Walk Into A Bar. Brazen, 2025. Kindle AZW file.

The novel is narrated by an unnamed Chinese American woman married to Sam, a white American man, with whom she has two young children, Noah and Lily. It opens with her realizing that her children prefer Sam’s improvised bedtime stories over her readings from books, which quietly wounds her and prompts her to buy a joke book in hopes of becoming funnier. She reflects on her abandoned dream of writing children’s books, a goal encouraged by her best friend, Darlene.

The narrator recalls the night Sam confessed to having an affair with a woman named Maggie during an Indian buffet dinner. On the train home, she asks factual questions about the affair but avoids asking why it happened, fearing it would force her to confront the story of their failing marriage. The following morning, Sam leaves to stay at his parents’ house in Oyster Bay. The narrator reflects on his wealthy family and a former family tradition at that house which now feels irrevocably lost. She wonders if Sam will recreate this ritual there with Maggie.

After Sam leaves, the narrator goes to Darlene’s house for comfort. The two revisit a college ritual of lying on the floor to vent, then look Maggie up online. The narrator is hurt that Maggie is white and questions what this says about Sam’s feelings toward her and their marriage. Darlene, who makes symbolic ceramic urns for people leaving parts of their past behind, offers support as the narrator processes her grief.

After Sam’s confession, the narrator develops chest pain that turns out to be cancer, echoing the breast cancer that killed her mother years earlier. She recalls meeting Sam shortly after her mother’s death, when she repeatedly visited a bar associated with happier memories. In the present, she begins telling her children myths instead of reading from books, including a Chinese story her mother once told her.

She reflects on her relationship with Sam, noting that he always led their progression from dating to marriage to children. She imagines telling him about the cancer and how he would take control of her care, but when he returns from Oyster Bay without his wedding ring and announces plans to move out, she realizes he has already begun a new life. She chooses not to tell him about her diagnosis. Darlene accompanies her to a biopsy, during which the narrator removes her wedding ring and leaves it with Darlene.

Sam proposes taking the children to Six Flags before telling them about the separation, a plan the narrator angrily rejects, seeing it as his attempt to control the breakup narrative. Resisting the urge to provoke a larger fight, she quietly retaliates by mismatching his socks. She reflects on family photographs that exclude her because she was always behind the camera.

The narrator tells Noah about the separation on her own, using worms in the yard as a metaphor for having two homes. Sam responds with passive aggression, and Darlene suggests he resents her for reclaiming control of the story. Shortly afterward, the narrator receives confirmation that she has breast cancer. She privately names her tumor “Maggie,” decides again not to tell Sam about her diagnosis. Sam and the narrator tell Lily about the separation together. At night, she tells Noah and Lily the Legend of the Lotus Lantern, resolving to repeat it so they will remember it as they grow older.

Sam’s mother calls, clearly aware of the separation, and offers to host Noah and Lily at the Oyster Bay house for the summer. The narrator agrees and receives nightly phone calls from the children while they are away. Sam offers the narrator the house and most of its contents, and they negotiate custody. After the children return, the new custody arrangement begins. When Noah injures his arm and Sam cannot handle the hospital paperwork, the narrator steps in. Noah asks to return to the narrator’s house with her where she prepares ice cream sundaes for Noah, Sam, and herself. This succeeds in cheering Noah up and he announces he is happy to return to Sam’s apartment and they leave, leaving the narrator alone.

When the children are with Sam, the narrator struggles with loneliness, obsessing over photos of them and speaking to her tumor, still named Maggie. Stories about fate and soulmates prompt Lily to ask about her parents’ relationship, forcing the narrator to confront how that story has changed and leaving her unsure how to explain the separation.

The narrator’s surgery is successful, and she hides it from Sam and the children by claiming she is in Vermont with Darlene, who fabricates photos to support the lie. A cancer recurrence test places her in an uneasy middle ground, deepening her sense of limbo. She explains to Darlene that keeping the diagnosis from Sam is a way of proving she can survive independently. She continues telling her children Chinese myths.

As the separation becomes public, the narrator hesitates to share the news with others, likening divorce to the guarded early stages of pregnancy. When divorce papers arrive formally through a lawyer, she signs them with Darlene’s support and practices calling Sam her “ex-husband.”

Sam suggests that the narrator meet Maggie. At the meeting, the narrator recognizes that Sam and Maggie now share a story that no longer belongs to her.

As the school year begins, the narrator volunteers for story hour at the library and plants a tree with Noah and Lily, signaling new beginnings. In the epilogue, a clear mammogram confirms her recovery. Darlene gives her a ceramic urn containing her wedding ring, bringing this chapter of her life to a close.