My novel is about a young girl, Marie Claire, growing up in Belgium during the turbulent era of the 1920's and 30's. The story leads the reader onto her adult life and her exciting, traumatic and eventful love life, spanning the dark years of her country's occupation by the Nazis, two narrow escapes, one from deportation for slave labour, the other from certain death, the liberation gradually bringing about the possibility of a new, better life and true love at last. The reader is then led onto her later life, through the austerity period of the late 1940's and early 1950's, up to the 21st century. My main character, Marie Claire, relates her whole story in installments, to a lively group of senior citizens at her local social club, with the aim of publishing her life story to sell in a fund-raising venture to help save the club from closure.