Solicitor Noel Strachan narrates the story of Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman who survives a brutal forced march as a Japanese prisoner of war in occupied Malaya during the Second World War, forming a bond there with Australian POW Joe Harman. Years later, an unexpected inheritance allows Jean to repay the Malayan village that sheltered her, and then to travel to the Australian outback in search of Joe, where her entrepreneurial drive transforms a struggling cattle town into "a town like Alice" Springs.