Four years after Alfie Summerfield's father left London to become a soldier in World War I he has not returned but Alfie, now nine, is shining shoes at King's Cross Station when he happens to learn that his father is at a nearby hospital being treated for shell shock.

It's Christmas time, 1919. Three years before, seventeen-year-old Margot Allan, a respectable vicar's daughter, fell passionately in love. But she lost her fianc,̌ Harry, to the Great War. In turn, she gained a desperate secret, one with the power to ruin her life and her family's reputation, a secret she guards at all costs. Now Margot's family is gathering at the vicarage for the first time since the War ended. And Harry, it turns out, isn't dead....

When Archie is given a scrapbook for his tenth birthday in 1914, he chronicles the next four years of his life using documents, artifacts, and comic strips.