This novel can be described as a story of physical survival and emotional growth set at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. The perspective shifts continually between five central characters and between east London and wartime France as past traumas and relationships unfold in the context of a dangerous present.

"It's a bright morning. Although it's still before eight o'clock the sun has already risen quite high in the sky across to the east. He can hear skylarks twittering, and in the sky above. Swifts soar and swoop catching whatever insects they can... after all these months of what he knows the newspapers are calling the 'phoney war', it's hard to believe there's a war on, and that not far away the Germans are racing in their direction..."