In 1940 Andy Bertellotti, with his pregnant wife Kathy and their daughter Aida, is running their profitable fish-and-chip shop in Scotland. When Mussolini joins Hitler and plunges Italy into the world war, Churchill proclaims "Collar the lot," thus condemning resident Italians in Great Britain to a life behind barriers and barbed wire. A policeman who has always been their friend arrests the Bertellottis and sends them to internment, branded as "enemy aliens" and cut off from friends and family. Andy's brother Tommy and their sister Bruna are in Italy-fleeing from the Fascist army and Nazi marauders. Separated, they witness hellish events, including a massacre at a church service. Woven among the threads of great peril and deprivation, terror and indignities, gleam stories of everyday life with its touching moments, small celebrations, and poignant childhood games. Anna Fiorina, born in internment, shows the reader how brave survivors-despite everything-can arise from the ashes and austerity of war with hearts full of forgiveness and steadfast love."