Born at the height of the war in Europe, Michele grows up in his family's war-torn mountain village between Rome and Naples. The Allies and Germans are in conflict moving to get to nearby Monte Cassino, which was to become the place of one of Italy's fiercest battles. Five years later, over a thousand miles away in the south of England, a "war baby" is born in peacetime Britain. Baby Susan's mother is a young woman who has no choice but to give her daughter up. These two children's lives, so far apart in many ways, later come together in a series of strangely entwined events. And although Susan would never know it, she would discover the place where her unknown father's life ended, in that same village which Michele called his childhood home.