Rae Strouse is a Lively Octegenarian with an Ailing husband. Carter Bond is a private investigator trying to give up smoking. Amy and Jill Burrows are a mother and teenage daughter traveling together, bearing a secret weight of baggage between them. Laura Lopez, reeling from the death of her politician husband, needs a new set of dreams. They are about to meet at a fabled health spa called The Cloisters, known affectionately to its devotees as Fat Chance. This is the story of a year in their lives in which they change their own fates, and one another's!

Five Fortunes weaves a large-hearted tale for the nineties of five women who learn that it is both true and untrue that we all make our own luck. Though they live in a very real world, constantly reminded of how closely linked are rich and poor, fortune and misfortune, there is a magic to this year in which they cheer one another, then cheer each other on.