The house was stripped bare of all its treasures. Gone was the furniture, the family silver, the paintings and the antique china. And if that was a shock for Charles Todd, painter of horses, how much more harrowing was the trauma for his cousin Donald, whose house it was and whose young wife lay on the sitting room floor, bloody and dead... A coincidental meeting with a middle-aged widow sends Charles off to Australia...
The famed BBC correspondent furnishes an incisive, firsthand portrait of America on the homefront during the early days of World War II, describing the dramatic changes that were occurring throughout the nation during the period as it was transformed from a civilian society to a wartime one, as seen through the eyes of ordinary citizens.