Joan Langley was blessed with both her father's brains and her mother's beauty. She was stubborn and headstrong and usually got what she wanted. A junior at Columbia, she had convinced her father that accompanying him on his business trip to Europe would be a wonderful experience. She had an ulterior motive when she persuaded him that she could stay on in Belgium with her father's partner, Albert Freyberg, and his family. It would bring her face to face in a tumultuous time to the experiences of a nation torn between war and peace. Later, as the war exploded in front of her, she would stare the Nazi juggernaut directly in the eye. She had placed herself in the wrong place and in the wrong time in history. It is 1940 and her spring journey was just beginning.