In 1917 the Great War rages on, and for the Hunters, their friends and their servants the war is where they live now. David has returned from the Front a shadow of his former self; his sister Diana, newly married, copes with pregnancy alone, her husband at the Front. Aunt Laura, eager for challenge, goes to France with an ambulance, while Beattie struggles to manage war work and household, while racked with her secret guilt and a new threat of exposure. U-boat attacks face Britain with starvation and with the worsening privation comes a new horror as Germany begins a lethal bombing campaign. But even in the darkest hours of war, new life and new hope can burgeon, with the promise that the future might still hold happiness for them all.