Throughout his childhood and adolescence Willie Maddison has always felt himself to be a misfit. He has never known a mother's love nor felt any affection from a father who blames his son for his wife's death in child-birth. The outbreak of war in 1914 gives him the chance to escape the suffocating constraints of his home life and he enlists in the army. It is in the trenches that at last he finds comradeship and a sense of purpose and experiences events that will change his life forever.

On Christmas Eve, 1914 a spontaneous truce breaks out along a number of sectors of the front. The guns fall silent and carols can be heard coming from the German trenches. After a time, men from the opposing armies begin to venture forth into No Man's Land. The opportunity is taken to bury the dead and joint services are held. On Christmas day, celebrations are shared, gifts exchanged and games played. Willie is shocked to learn that the German soldiers also believe God to be on their side and realises that were it up to the ordinary soldier the killing would never start again.

Commissioned, decorated and eventually demobilised, Willie Maddison finds it difficult to adjust to civilian life and, after a disastrous love-affair, retreats to a derelict cottage on the North Devon coast to make a start on the book that has been burning in him since that fateful Christmas Day and which he hopes will help prevent the pointless sacrifice of another generation.

It is not long before his unconventional behaviour and what are judged to be dangerously radical ideas are seen by the 'local establishment' as a threat to good order and when he forms an attachment to a daughter of one of the oldest families a campaign is mounted to drive him out.