Ike Graham (Richard Gere) is a big-city newspaper columnist who causes an uproar with an unflattering and wildly erroneous story about Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts), a small-town woman whose reputation for leaving men stranded at the altar has made her a local legend. But while Ike plans to prove he was right about Maggie all along — and Maggie plans to even the score with Ike — neither expects the kind of sparks that fly when they finally meet.