Homer stops at the Krustyburger drive-thru and orders a large deep-fried meal. When he bites into a burrito, the contents shoot out the back and cover most of the windshield. The car swerves out of control, crashes through a wall of the nuclear power plant, and pins a government official against a wall. The official writes Mr. Burns a citation, and shortly thereafter Homer is fired. While walking sadly down a street, Homer happens upon a used-car lot that is hiring salesmen. Homer tries his luck at selling used cars, only to end up buying an ambulance that’s sitting on the lot. He drives the vehicle to the Sunshine Ambulance garage, where he speaks with characters reminiscent of those from the television show Taxi. A Louie De Palma-type hires Homer to work the night shift. That night Homer sets out with Bart, Lisa, and Maggie and tends to Springfield residents in need of emergency medical treatment. Meanwhile Marge, Bart, and Lisa peruse a large bookstore called Bookaccino’s. A group of women gather in a corner of the store to see novelist Esme Delacroix, an author of tawdry romance novels. Marge speaks with Delacroix, and upon being told that anyone with passion can write, Marge determines to author her own novel. She sets the story on Nantucket Island in the mid-1800s, and decides it should be about the whaling trade.

Though the story is set in the 1800s, Marge bases most of the characters on people in her life. She uses herself as the inspiration for Temperance Barrows; Homer for Temperance’s fat and bald whaler husband, Captain Mordecai; and Bart and Lisa for the children Bartleby and Leezakiah. As the tale unfolds Temperance concludes that she married a brute, and she takes a liking to the kindly Cyrus Manley, patterned after Ned Flanders. Marge gives the novel to Lisa and asks her to critique it. Lisa immediately recognizes her father in the story and tells Marge that she’s being a little too hard on Homer. Marge gives the novel to Homer and asks him what he thinks. Homer only gets through a few sentences before falling asleep in a hammock. Marge asks Homer what he thought of the book, prompting Homer to lie and tell her that he liked it. Marge sends the novel to Esme Delacroix, who likes it so much she forwards it to authors Tom Clancy and Thomas Pynchon for an endorsement. Marge’s novel, “The Harpooned Heart,” soon hits the bookstores.

Marge appears at Bookaccino’s to autograph copies of her work. When people throughout Springfield read the novel, they recognize Homer as the inspiration for Captain Mordecai. Determined to read the book, Homer buys a books-on-tape version read by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. When the story ends, a furious Homer confronts Marge, and then Ned Flanders, who tries to make a getaway in his car. Lisa realizes that her father is going to catch Flanders, just like the ending of her mother’s book. Lisa reads aloud the ending for Bart. The story has Captain Mordecai harpooning Cyrus Manley, sending him plummeting off a cliff and onto a whale’s back. The annoyed whale swims off. The harpoon rope gets tangled around Mordecai’s ankle and he’s yanked off the cliff. Meanwhile Homer corners Flanders on a cliff. Instead of attacking him, however, Homer begs Flanders to show him how to be a better husband. Flanders gives him some quick advice, telling him how important it is to listen to Marge. Homer takes Flanders’ advice… and Marge and Homer make up.