It's Swansea, 1939, and having said goodbye to three brothers and a boyfriend, nineteen-year-old Nell is faced with an uncertain future on the home-front.

From dealing with a wandering grandmother to witnessing the deaths of her friends, she is determined not to let the war beat her down. She joins the ARP and eventually becomes a local heroine, but behind the smiling face hides a private pain she could never speak of. Despite the toils of war, the only thing Nell really lives for are the letters from abroad and the hope of a better tomorrow.

A family mystery remains unsolved and it's up to 13-year-old Danny to uncover the truth. So after moving to Wales to live in his great-great grandfather's cottage, weird things begin to happen, disembodied voices, the ticking and the tocking of clocks that aren't there. And someone is speaking German, and about Hitler. All this propels him into the past so that he can save the future and his family's reputation.