For her entire life, Rita Strathcote has lived in the same stifling small town, working in and living above the struggling second-hand bookshop that has been her family's for three generations – and now she's had enough. What was once a haven has become a prison and the confinement of narrow-minded, small-thinking Brainbridge threatens to overwhelm her.

But Rita and her sophisticated (self-proclaimed) friend Kylie have dreams; big dreams; dreams of travelling to exotic faraway places and a lifestyle usually reserved for the rich and famous. Rita spends hours trawling through National Geographic magazines, planning their life of liberation and self-indulgence.

The only challenge to the fulfilment of their dreams is that Rita's bookstore hasn't turned a profit for years. Rita owes a lot of money – a fact Jackson Grant, the puffed-up mortgage manager of the local bank, reminds her off at regular intervals. If Rita is to find freedom, she needs a plan.

The local policeman, Dwayne Kearney, who has doted on her since high school, has long since been discounted as an option – Rita would rather be buried alive than marry a local man and settle down to the mundanity of Bainbridge life.

That's when Carl Delamore arrives in town. Scruffy and crass he may be; he is also a man of apparent wealth. Rita hatches an audacious plan to befriend Carl and secure the finances she needs to buy her freedom.

The idea is quite ridiculous, implausible even, but Rita quickly becomes convinced of its worth. Her plotting becomes an obsession that reveals a dark side of Rita; a side Rita herself didn't know existed.

Alienated from her friend, Rita blunders on, finding herself the cause of a suicide, an attempted murder, and the death of the one person who truly loved her.

Through it all Rita discovers, sometimes you gotta lose everything to find out what you really want.