Just Once

The novel opens with a frame narrative set in March 2018, when Audra Mitchell attends a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at the U.S. Capitol honoring members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a clandestine World War II intelligence agency. Audra's grandmother, Irvel Holland Myers, was one of roughly 4,000 women who served as OSS spies, a secret the family discovered only in 2015 when Audra and her husband, Tom, found a wooden chest in the attic of Irvel's old Bloomington, Indiana, home. Inside were five Super 8 videotapes in which Irvel and her husband, Hank, recorded their love story after her Alzheimer's diagnosis. Audra has since written a novel, Just Once, based on the tapes. Snowed in at a Washington hotel after the ceremony, she begins to read.

The main narrative opens on October 2, 1989, when 69-year-old Irvel and Hank learn that Irvel has an aggressive case of Alzheimer's and may need full-time care within a year. The doctor notes that red is the last color an Alzheimer's patient retains. On the drive home, Irvel insists her memory is intact, recalling how 12-year-old Hank jumped into a rushing creek to save her, caught pneumonia, and nearly died, yet told her upon returning to school that he would do it all again and one day marry her.

Determined to preserve their story, Hank buys a video camera and proposes they film everything while Irvel can still remember. She agrees, asking if they will include her secret life as a spy. The next morning, wearing a red dress, Irvel sits before the camera at a local park and begins narrating.

Their story reaches back to the summer of 1940. Hank, home from the University of Michigan, invites Irvel to Lake Monroe. Though she is dating Gary Walsh and Hank has been seeing Maggie Wright, their day together makes clear they belong to each other. Yet neither acts, and by Thanksgiving 1940, Hank's brother Sam, a math education student at Indiana University, asks Hank's permission to take Irvel to dinner. Unable to confess his feelings while dating Maggie, Hank consents.

Over the following year, Irvel genuinely falls for Sam, though she never quite matches the depth of feeling she has for Hank. She develops severe panic attacks triggered by news of the war in Europe, learning to combat them through memorized Scripture. Sam wants to propose but senses Irvel is not fully sure.

In early December 1941, Hank breaks up with Maggie. Days later, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. Sam enlists in the Army, but the local recruiting office takes only one son per family, turning Hank away. The night before shipping out, Sam breaks up with Irvel, telling her he has always sensed she looks at Hank differently. The next morning, he privately asks Hank to take care of her, acknowledging that Hank has always loved Irvel.

Irvel takes over Sam's math classes at Bloomington High after scoring 98 percent on a comprehensive exam. Hank is hired to teach government. They rebuild their friendship while writing letters to Sam, now training in the British Isles. In early 1942, military officials recruit Irvel for the OSS, which needs civilian mathematicians to break enemy codes. She must pose as a Navy nurse and tell no one. Her friend Ruth Cohen, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, is recruited alongside her.

That spring, Hank and Irvel confess their love after a school dance. The night before Irvel departs, they share their first kiss. Hank then enlists with the Marines and ships out for the Pacific.

Aboard the USS Solace, a hospital ship, Irvel and Ruth work as code breakers while posing as nurses. They create an unbreakable code used to reposition U.S. aircraft carriers ahead of the Battle of Midway and deliver critical targeting documents through a Japanese-occupied village. The resulting American victory sinks three Japanese carriers. Irvel writes Sam confessing she loves Hank and writes Hank urging him to stay alive.

In August 1942, Hank lands at Guadalcanal with the Marines. Months of brutal fighting follow. In October, Army reinforcements arrive, including Sam. The brothers reunite, and Hank confesses he kissed Irvel. Sam is hurt but at peace, saying he always knew Irvel loved Hank first. During a nighttime mission, an explosion fatally wounds Sam. He dies in Hank's arms after asking Hank to tell their parents he loves them and to go love Irvel.

Irvel learns Sam is dead and Hank is missing, presumed killed. She refuses to go home, continuing her spy work. In February 1943, she is presented with Hank's Marine jacket, recovered from a body, and told he is dead. She returns briefly to Bloomington, visits both brothers' graves, then ships back out.

In truth, Hank is alive. After Sam's death, he gives his jacket to an injured soldier on the shore. Japanese soldiers kill that man and beat Hank unconscious, stealing both men's dog tags. The dead soldier, wearing Hank's jacket, is misidentified as Hank. Hank wakes from a nearly year-long coma in a Honolulu hospital in September 1943. He writes repeatedly to Irvel, but his letters are returned because of her classified status. Inspired by Irvel's concern for persecuted Jewish communities, he reenlists with the Army to fight in Europe. On April 11, 1945, he helps liberate Buchenwald concentration camp, freeing 28,000 prisoners. Among those he encounters is a brown-haired, blue-eyed two-year-old girl crying for her mother—an image he never forgets.

On April 28, 1945, a Japanese kamikaze plane strikes the USS Pinkney, a Navy ship where Irvel and Ruth are stationed. The explosion throws Irvel overboard, and wreckage strikes her head. She survives and recovers in Honolulu, where a doctor warns that her injury could lead to early-onset dementia. General William Donovan, head of the OSS, reminds her to maintain silence about her work.

The war ends, and Hank returns to Bloomington believing Irvel is dead. On June 11, 1945, Irvel arrives home and learns he is alive. She waits on his family's porch, and when he spots her, he breaks into a run. That evening, he proposes while they dance to "Moonlight Serenade." Days before their December wedding, boxes of undelivered wartime letters arrive, intercepted because of her classified status. She tells Hank the full truth: She was a spy and code breaker, not a nurse. He is stunned but deeply moved, and they marry on December 22.

Their life unfolds over the following decades. Their son, Charlie Myers, is born in 1947. In 1955, Hank arranges a visit from Ruth, now raising an adopted daughter named Chloe, the same toddler Hank remembers rescuing from Buchenwald. Charlie grows up, marries Peggy Landers, moves to Los Angeles, and in 1980 they have a daughter, Audra.

The postscript covers the years after Irvel's diagnosis. Hank plays the tapes each morning and frames their photos in red. When the videos begin to agitate her, he packs them in the wooden chest and stores it in the attic. In 1995, Hank dies of a heart attack while fishing with Charlie. Irvel is placed in Sunset Hills Adult Care Home, where she spends her remaining years drinking peppermint tea and waiting each afternoon for Hank to come home. She dies in 2005. The frame narrative closes with Audra finishing the book in the snowed-in hotel room, imagining her grandparents in heaven watching as their love story comes to life again.