In the 1940s, the wife of a war prisoner lives in desperate loneliness and fear on an isolated farmstead.

She encounters a young farmboy completely out of his element as a soldier, and the two carve out a relationship in defiance of the war around them. His decision to escape the military and to dress as his lover's sister to avoid detection eventually leads to tragedy.

Originally published in 1970, The Triple Echo was Bates's last significant novella and took twenty-five years to complete. Known in the United States as Soldiers in Skirts, this is a beautiful, reissued edition of the work that inspired the 1972 film adaptation starring Oliver Reed, Brian Deacon, and Glenda Jackson.

H.E. Bates was born in 1905 at Rushden in Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. He worked as a journalist and clerk on a local newspaper before publishing his first book after which he quickly acquired a reputation for his stories about English country life. During World War II, he was a squadron leader in the R.A.F. and was commissioned to write stories about service life, which he published under the pseudonym of 'Flying Officer X'.

In 1958 the Larkin family appeared for the first time in The Darling Buds of May, the first of the enduringly popular Larkin family novels. Bates was awarded he C.B.E. in 1973 and died in 1974.