Thirteen-year-old Rose Gray's fervent prayers for peace during the bombing raids have been answered, but no one around her in 1947 England is physically or spiritually free of the aftereffects of war. Living on a government-run tenant farm, Rose struggles with her father's increasingly violent moods, her mother's past (including the appearance of a stranger returning from war), and a school headmistress bordering on madness. Rose's story is about how, with the help of her religious grandmother, her best friend Annie, and the natural forces of adolescence, she makes small bids for freedom in the midst of circumstances beyond her control.