Douglas Cheeseman is a big-eared engineer who avoids his own reflection and has bored his wife into leaving him. Newly single, he's the sort of man you'd never look at twice. Harley Savage is a large, raw-boned, abrasive woman who's been through three husbands and doesn't want another. Neither character seems to be a prime subject for a burgeoning romance.

Both Douglas and Harley are carrying all kinds of unhappy baggage when they meet by chance in the little town of Karakarook, New South Wales, population 1,374, on opposing sides of a local issue that's got tempers flaring. Being in Karakarook is something of a voyage of discovery for both of them. Unlike Felicity Porcelline, a local woman dangerously haunted by the idea of perfection, Douglas and Harley come to understand that what appears to others as weakness is often the best kind of strength.