A tale set in World War II finds a rescue worker struggling for composure after a bombing, a young woman longing for her soldier lover, and a convict who watches a battle through the bars of his window. Moving backward through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, this novel tells the story of four Londoners--three women and a young man with a past--whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, surprise, and turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.