Twenty-one-year-old Louise Dietrich—like several of her fellow nursing school graduates—readily enlists in the U.S. Army Nursing Corps during World War II. She is proud to serve in the Allied war effort and excited to venture beyond the three-county rural Wisconsin area where she was raised. She is assured by army recruiters that nurses will be stationed in the relative safety of non-combat areas. And she has an intrinsic positive attitude that has already seen her through more than her share of adversities.

Louise embarks on an eye-opening journey—one we're anxious to witness and understand. She experiences life to the fullest; she sees beauty and horror; and she meets men and women who love her, challenge her, and hurt her. The memorable people she encounters in the military share a bond that those stateside cannot begin to understand.

Love in a Time of War is loosely based on letters written by an army nurse to her sister during the war, with particulars drawn from the author's imagination, accounts of others in the military, and various historians.