Catherine Dessin is 15 and still at convent school when the Germans enter Paris in 1940. Her parents are patriots and she is taught to hate the enemy, but two years later she falls in love with a senior – and married – German officer, defying the anger of her family and friends. The strains which this act of treachery place on those who love her, and the tensions it creates as she turns from her Roman Catholic upbringing, form the background to an unusual and doomed love story. Catherine grows up abruptly when Klaus, the German officer, returns from a spell home having realised for the first time the evil of the regime he is serving. Klaus now struggles with his own conflict of loyalties – between Catherine and his family and between his patriotic duty and his hatred of Nazism. Wary of those on whom they should rely, they become closer to each other. Rejected by her family, quietly ignored by friends, Catherine has to cope with the unforgiving aftermath of liberation. With insights into character that were widely recognised in her first novel, Ann Widdecombe twists and turns the plot to a surprising yet satisfying conclusion.