Plot summary

Adelaide lawyers Lauren Ford and Ned Pelton have just become engaged--on the same day that indecisive and insecure Lauren has been promoted to full associate at Hampton and Associates by her demanding boss, Ms. Hampton, whom Ned refers to as Cruella de Vil. As he proposes to Lauren, Ned neglects to tell her that he, emotionally ill-equipped to handle the work, has quit his job as a public prosecutor; he had mostly gone into the work to meet his now-deceased father's expectations in following in his footsteps. In her focus on her own career especially with high maintenance Ms. Hampton, Lauren hasn't noticed Ned's dissatisfaction with his job. Ned doesn't want a long engagement, and in fact Lauren wants to get married in 10 days in her hometown of Darwin, as she is able to negotiate the time off with Ms. de V--er, Ms. Hampton. When Lauren and Ned arrive in Darwin, they discover that her Aborigine mother Daffy left her father Trevor Ford for undisclosed reasons six months ago, and her present whereabouts are unknown. With what little information they have, Lauren and Ned leave teary-eyed Trevor in Darwin to lead the wedding planning as they try to find Daffy. Ned funnels his newfound energies into this task, which Lauren much needs him to do; she really wants her mother at her wedding, but she is the one more apt to give up on what seems like a wild-goose chase. As they trek through the expanses of Northern Australia, the leads point them in the direction of the Tiwi Islands, Daffy's homeland, from which she fled at 18 to escape an arranged marriage. With this new information in the context of their situation, Lauren and Ned can't help but reflect on their own relationship in the countdown to their own supposed wedding day.—Huggo