Jack the lad and bloody Mary

London, 1939. Mary and Jack. In love, unmarried and happy. Until the outbreak of the Second World War. Jackie, ever the lad, is bent on escaping conscription, but the contacts he makes drag him ever deeper into a dangerous criminal underworld.

Yet it is Mary who undertakes the most surprising transformation.

Despite striving for normality, she must confront a set of choices that will lead to a backstreet abortion and an unexpected vocation.

With every tone and cadence of this novel, from wireless to air-raid siren, Connolly conducts with masterful hand and compassionate grace the voices of a once hopeful working class couple - now blitzed, battered and breaking into a desperate new dawn.