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It’s 1968, and a devasting double betrayal propels Brencie Jessup out of her hometown in Texas, desperately seeking a geographic cure for her broken heart. She leaves her job at NASA and accepts a position with the U.S. Air Force in Germany, only to discover she isn’t that far from home. Ten years after the official end of the World War II allied occupation, a thriving American sub-culture still exists in Wiesbaden. Thirty-five thousand expats enjoy a post-war raj. Times are good, living is cheap, and the rules are soft.
Bearing secrets, Brencie arrives in Wiesbaden, and her surroundings impress her, from the cultivated beauty of the town to the imposing Amelia Earhart Hotel, home to single American women such as Brencie. Most of all, she’s impressed and delighted by her new friend, free-spirited Lulu Greenholt.
Because of her bad luck in love, Brencie has sworn off love, but Lulu says whether Brencie wants it or not, love is likely to find her, in a community where single men out-number single women by three to one.
Lulu and Brencie drink too much champagne over breakfast at Lulu’s apartment, and she educates Brencie on all the ways the U.S. Department of Defense makes living in abroad comfortable. The champagne flows, and Lulu asks Brencie if she’s on the pill. Shocked, Brencie says single women in Friendswood can’t get the pill, and some doctors require married women to get their husband’s permission.
In Wiesbaden, says Lulu, the American hospital dispenses birth control pills, no questions asked. Brencie reveals some details of her past, namely that her ex-fiance looks disturbingly like her father, Anson Jessup. Anson deserted Brencie and her stepmother, Agnes-Rose Jessup, when Brencie was ten years old. It’s clear to Lulu that Brencie’s stepmother is a prime player in Brencie’s life and history, but Brencie avoids talking about her.
Military life is all Lulu has ever known. Her father, a career military man, was stationed in Germany, where Lulu graduated high school. When her family was reassigned to Omaha, Lulu stayed behind and got a job with the U.S. Air Force.
Despite Brencie’s resolve to leave love behind, she meets Chase Dellasera, a charismatic fighter pilot, whose duties take him away shortly after they meet. On her first day at work, she meets Nolan Hanik, an ambitious Staff Sergeant who plans to re-enroll in law school when his hitch is up. He’s focused, determined, a star on the base football team, and immediately taken with Brencie. Her life becomes more complicated, just as Lulu predicted, and more challenging.
