Bernie Molloy has returned to her home town in the outback after years of reckless, abandoned living. Alone in her parents' old and neglected bungalow, with an evening job at the roughest bar in town, she wrestles with the demons of her past - and prepares to turn forty. Then a chance encounter with violence frightens Bernie into taking lodgers, and two very different men enter her life, to change it forever. Eddy Carpenter is a drifter, a gentle soul who turns out to have an unexpected aptitude for domesticity. John Roper is an English pilot who has come to Australia to live his dream, following in the footsteps of his dead father, a World War II hero. Gradually, as Bernie, Eddy and John settle into an uneasy yet strangely companionable routine, she dares to hope that this may mark the beginning of a new life.