Their lives are our lives, their stories our stories, and Marge PIercy has succeeded brilliantly in writing the long-overdue novel of "the other" World War II: not the war fought on the front lines, but the war, fought mostly by women, on the factory lines, the food lines behind enemy lines in Europe.

Piercy follows the lives of ten extraordinary people- six women and four men- as they move through the dizzying atmosphere of the world's wartime capitals: the impulsive couplings and bittersweet partings, the stultifying deprivations and the once-in-a-lifetime chances. Most of all, she shows how World War II became a crucible, where unformed young people were hardened into men and women, charged with saving civilization as no generation had before or since.