Four Minutes centres around Leah, an orphan who struggles to integrate into society as a gay woman. She tries to volunteer at the orphanage, and to adopt a young girl - a choice that is frustrated by bureaucracy and the stigma against gay women. In addition to Leah's narrative, the novel contains nine other standalone character studies. These sections are each meant to be read in approximately four minutes, a nod to a social experiment that put forth the hypothesis that it only takes four minutes of looking someone in the eye and listening to them in order to accept and empathise with them.