The book tells a story of a woman whose real name is Etna Bliss, but she doesn't remember it due to her concussion which turn out to be a hysteria that she got when she ran away from her American husband to London.

Following long court proceedings which started in February 1917, despite being diagnosed with shell shock, she wins custody over her adult children Clara and Nicholas only by 1930.

The book received mixed reviews, with The Harvard Crimson saying "Shreve cannot control dialogue rhythm and the reader's visualization of the scene without relying on punctuation to do her work," hinting on the author's weak parts of the story.

[1] USA Today, on the other hand, gave it three stars, saying that "If there is a fault in the author's writing then its only the fact that she made it more to be a love story rather than a war one".

[4] It was also reviewed by such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times,[5] San Francisco Chronicle,[6] the Boston Globe,[7] the Washington Post,[8] and Toronto Star.