To the World War Two battlefield casualties evacuated from bloody Pacific beachheads to the clean white beds of hospital ships, the Navy nurses who care for them seem like angels. For young war widow Ensign Anna Donovan, however, the unrelenting stresses of this duty soon begin to chip away at her morale, eventually revealing a side of her that's anything but angelic. Far from family, friends and fiancé, at sea aboard the hospital ship USS Compassion, she's horrified to find herself irresistibly drawn to Mark Whitmore, a charismatic but married chaplain. Eventually her need for respite from the endless stream of young men torn apart in this enormous conflict overrides loyalty to the man she's engaged to back home in Maine.