Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did? Every day Iona Iverson, a stylish, opinionated, larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, rides the train to work with her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Mr.-Too-Good-to-Be-True. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then, one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He'd have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you -- and even more about yourself.