On a dark and stormy night, the roads are blocked by a freak blizzard and a group of bus passengers is stranded  in Grace’s Diner, until the snow- blocked roads can be cleared.

Dr Gerald Lyman is a professor of doubtful character, Elma is a young and impressionable waitress and Cherie is an aspiring singer from a seedy night club who always seems to bring out the worst in men.

She has been abducted and forced onto the bus by the lovesick and exuberant cowboy Beauregard Decker. He thinks that he can “catch him a wife” in the same way that he would rope a steer!

His trusty old sidekick Virgil Blessing is constantly trying to keep him out of trouble, with little success.

Meanwhile, Grace, owner of the diner and queen of all she surveys, has her own interests – possibly including a more than motherly fondness for Carl, the lusty bus driver who has his eye on someone else.

Whilst events unfold as the human emotions, weaknesses and relationships develop  in the diner’s humble and cosy surroundings, the Sheriff, Will Masters, tries to keep an eye on things.