In a former life, Olivia Spooner worked as a Community and Hospital Pharmacist in Auckland, Wellington, and London. As a health professional she met many people from all walks of life, and discovered that listening to a patient or caregiver’s story is one of the most powerful medicines anyone can prescribe.

For the past fifteen years she has pursued her passion for writing alongside raising three children and running her own business. Luckily, as owner-operator of gorgeous independent bookstore, The Booklover, she’s able to indulge in her love of books and reading, and still carve out time to write. She is the number one bestselling author of two historical fiction novels, The Girl from London and The Songbirds of Florence.

1942 in Wellington, and the war has never felt closer. Lorna’s older brothers are overseas fighting for their lives, and as the war in the Pacific rages on, 20,000 American troops are sent to keep New Zealand safe. Few are happy about it – the locals want their own boys back, and the Americans find their post at the end of the world strange and hostile. They do enjoy meeting the Kiwi girls, though, and when one of Lorna’s friends drags her along on a double date, she befriends Stan, a Marine from Chicago.

Stan is handsome and kind; the golden boy of his family. While he is posted overseas, his unruly younger brother Alfie joins the Marines and ends up in Wellington as well. Lorna struggles to connect with Alfie like she did with Stan: Alfie infuriates her. Yet when he leaves to fight, she thinks of him often, which feels like a betrayal to both Stan and her brothers.

As Lorna, her family and the American boys navigate life in wartime Wellington, the war itself is never far, and its consequences will find them no matter where they go.