Paperwork is about Cheryl Markovic Dugan, a war bride from Dubrovnik abandoned in the US by her soldier husband. As a single mother struggling to hold on to her job as a night aide in a nursing home, Cheryl believes the ability to cope with paperwork is an over-rated skill. The only thing she really needs to read, she insists, is the human heart. Her formula works until the medical director of the home taps her to care for his aging mother, a retired high school English teacher. Cheryl pits her belief in intuition against the older woman's insistence that, to succeed in life, you have to learn to read the fine print.