Daisy arrives in England and is picked up at the airport by cousin Edmond, not Aunt Penn as expected.

Aunt Penn sits with Daisy by the fire and tells her everything about her late mother without being asked.

A London train station is bombed and the war begins, prompting widespread reports of food shortages and transport shutdowns.

Edmond and Daisy share their first kiss after he confronts her privately about her refusal to eat.

Soldiers arrive at Aunt Penn's farm to commandeer it, announcing they will return the following day to take over.

Daisy and Piper are separated from Edmond and Isaac and relocated to live with Major Laurence McEvoy and his family.

Laurence tells Daisy that Edmond and Isaac are working at Gateshead Farm near the same river that runs past Aunt Penn's house.

Farm worker Joe taunts enemy soldiers at a checkpoint and is shot dead; Laurence is killed when he tries to intervene.

Soldier Baz wakes Daisy and Piper before dawn and helps them flee the barn with a bag of supplies.

Daisy and Piper discover the river connecting Aunt Penn's house to Gateshead Farm, giving them a clear direction to follow.

Daisy and Piper arrive at Gateshead Farm to find foxes and birds circling over the corpses of nearly everyone who lived there.

Daisy and Piper return to Aunt Penn's abandoned house and take shelter in the untouched lambing barn.

Daisy's father reaches her by phone and forces her to return to the United States.

Daisy is hospitalized in New York for disordered eating but surprises the staff by wanting to eat, so they release her.

Daisy settles permanently in England, growing food with Isaac and Piper while gardening alongside a slowly healing Edmond.

Daisy, a troubled American teenager, arrives in England to stay with her aunt and cousins just as an international war begins. After her Aunt Penn leaves for Oslo and never returns, enemy soldiers commandeer the family farm and split the cousins apart, sending Daisy and Piper to live with a major in the army while Edmond and Isaac are sent to work at Gateshead Farm. Violence escalates when two people in Daisy's work party are shot at a checkpoint, and a sympathetic soldier helps Daisy and Piper escape so they can travel cross-country to find their family. They follow a river to Gateshead Farm, only to discover a devastating massacre has taken place there. After returning home, Daisy is forced back to the United States by her father, but six years later she returns to England and works patiently to rebuild her relationship with the deeply traumatized Edmond.

The essential wartime journey from England's invasion to Daisy's return and reunion.

Daisy meets cousins Piper, Isaac, and Osbert at Aunt Penn's farmhouse and is shown to a bedroom by a welcoming Piper.

Daisy and the cousins spend a day fishing at the river, where Edmond names a skylark without being asked.

Local council workers visit the house, check on the children's welfare, and warn that food rationing will begin soon.

Edmond persuades Daisy to try eating some bacon, but it makes her gag.

Dr. Jameson visits the house to beg for antibiotics, and the cousins gather their remaining medicines to give him.

Piper quietly asks Daisy whether she is in love with Edmond, and Daisy admits that she is.

Daisy and Piper travel by van through destroyed towns and enemy checkpoints before arriving at the McEvoy household.

Daisy secretly steals a map from the McEvoy house and begins planning a route to reach Edmond at Gateshead Farm.

Daisy and Piper are put to work at Meadow Brook Farm, harvesting apples, plums, and beans alongside other civilians.

After Laurence is killed, Daisy and Piper are driven south and housed in a barn full of soldiers, sleeping in a loft.

During their cross-country journey, Daisy and Piper take shelter in a hut and discover a nearby store of edible hazelnuts.

Daisy shoots the dying family goat Ding to end his suffering after finding him starving in the Gateshead Farm barn.

Daisy and Piper return to Aunt Penn's house and take cold bucket baths; Daisy puts on Edmond's clothes for comfort.

After leaving her father's house, Daisy moves into her own apartment near the New York Public Library and gets a job there.

When Daisy returns to England, Isaac greets her warmly and speaks at unusual length, saying he had wanted to meet her in the village.

Before the war, Daisy bonds with her cousins through quiet daily rituals—fishing trips, farm chores, and frank conversations—while trying to hide her disordered eating from the people who are beginning to love her. When the occupation tightens and the family is split up, Daisy and Piper navigate life with strangers, secretly plotting their escape while working the land alongside other civilians. Violence forces them out of the McEvoy household and into a barn full of soldiers before they are eventually freed to make their long cross-country journey on foot. Along the way, small moments of resourcefulness and tenderness define their survival, from finding shelter in a hut to harvesting hazelnuts in the rain. When Daisy finally returns to England years later, the quiet greeting from Isaac and her own independent life in New York reveal how much both she and the world around her have changed.

The telling details and smaller moments that shaped Daisy's wartime experience.

Edmond picks Daisy up from the airport and appears to hear her unspoken thoughts, hinting at his psychic ability.

The cousins camp overnight in the lambing barn, and Edmond lays his cheek on Daisy's arm, sparking her first romantic feelings.

Daisy and Edmond stop pretending their kiss didn't happen and begin meeting secretly at night to pursue their romance.

While separated, Daisy discovers she can maintain a psychic connection with Edmond that lets them share sensations and whereabouts.

Laurence reveals to Daisy that the smallpox quarantine was a false rumor invented to control the rural civilian population.

Osbert accepts a job with the army and supports the soldiers' decision to separate the cousins, infuriating Daisy.

Daisy and Piper hear terrifying screams in the night while camping near Gateshead Farm, and Piper begs to go help.

Daisy searches methodically through the Gateshead Farm corpses and finds Dr. Jameson's body but neither Edmond nor Isaac.

After the Gateshead Farm massacre, Daisy realizes she can no longer sense Edmond's presence through their psychic connection.

While cooking foraged mushrooms during the journey, Daisy admits aloud for the first time that she has truly been starving.

Isaac tells Daisy that Edmond stopped believing in her love and urges her to go and speak with him directly.

Piper tells Daisy that Aunt Penn died while trying to return home to England from Oslo after the occupation began.

Daisy finds Edmond in the garden for the first time since the war—thin, scarred from self-harm, and looking at her with cold hostility.

Jonathan explains that Edmond's scars are from self-harm and that he was likely forced by soldiers to witness the Gateshead massacre.

Edmond finally responds after Daisy spends hours confessing her love, saying only 'OK' before taking her hands in his.

From the moment Edmond seems to hear Daisy's unspoken thoughts at the airport, the novel builds toward a series of discoveries that reshape her understanding of love, survival, and home. The absence of adult oversight allows Daisy and Edmond's forbidden romance to take root, and their psychic bond becomes her lifeline when soldiers force them apart. Revelations about the false quarantine and the true nature of the occupation strip away any remaining illusions of safety, while the massacre at Gateshead Farm—heard as distant screams one night and witnessed as carnage the next morning—marks the point at which Edmond's psychic silence signals something has gone terribly wrong. Years later, Daisy returns to England to find Edmond covered in self-harm scars, and only after Isaac pushes her to speak does she learn the full truth of what Edmond endured. Her patient act of love finally breaks through when Edmond, after hours of silence, takes her hands and says only 'OK.'

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional breakthroughs that defined the story's direction.

Meg Rosoff

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