In a remote outback community, tomboyish Ruby Vale runs the town's only eatery, the Boomerang Cafe. She is engaged to marry a stuffy man named Hamish, but prefers to spend much of her time with her best friend, Jack, a macho train conductor who is writing a romance novel on the sly. However it is not until the book becomes a bestseller that Ruby realizes that Jack has published the book under a pen name -- Ruby Vale. When publisher Ziggy Keane demands to meet the rising author, Jack begs Ruby to pose as him at an important meeting with Ziggy in Sydney where she successfully negotiates a follow-up novel deal and encounters a bit of unexpected romance.