n this year Maud and her family learn that the physical horrors and disappointment of living through a world war extend beyond mere death. For despondency and demoralising events happen closer to home as her children change in ways she previously could not have imagined. Would these occurrences have happened had the Germans not begun their quest for world domination? Just how long would it take to win the war as she and everybody else ask how many more needless deaths of soldiers, Jews, intellectuals, gypsies, ordinary civilians and the Nazis, so-called, undesirables would have to die? As the Morrow family's tired and weary souls prevail under the gravest of situations, Maud and her husband, Richard find the question impossible to answer. Yet, as they endure, bright speckles of happiness and even love and new life occasionally whirl around them making their lives just bearable.