Summary

Chapter 1 opens in 1918 in the English countryside, where upper-class Emily Bryce, the daughter of a judge, eagerly awaits her 21st birthday at her family’s estate—the year that she will be of the legal age to make her own path. Smothered by her parent’s snobbishness, their plans to marry her off to an aristocratic man, and their grief over her brother Freddie’s death in the war, Emily wishes to volunteer for the war effort as a nurse like her best friend Clarissa Hamilton. During one of her visits to the neighboring convalescent home, she meets a young Australian flight lieutenant recovering from an injury named Robbie Kerr. In Chapter 2, her mother plans a party to celebrate Emily’s birthday. Emily sees Robbie again. From a family of sheep farmers in the outback of New South Wales, he is charmingly different from...