Soffolk, summer 1943. Blue skies, record harvests and the build-up to one of the most bitter battles of the Second World War. Each dawn, from scores of bomber bases hastily-built among East Anglia's sleepy villages, thousands of American airmen take off to strike, in broad daylight and against appalling odds, at Germany's industrial war machine. Each dusk, hundreds fail to return.
Bedenham is one such base and one such village. For the villagers, the American invasion brings upheaval, uncertainty and unease. For Billy Street, fourteen, a streetwise London evacuee, it is heaven-sent, a time of unlimited opportunity and acceptance, at last, within a community he loves.
For Billy's schoolteacher, Heather Garrett, awaiting word of a husband missing for more than eighteen months, it is a time of increasing fear and isolation. And for Lt John Hooper, a brilliant but traumatised US pilot trying to come to terms with both the death of his entire crew and his own shameful survival, it is the start of a desperate struggle for his sanity and his redemption.
