Janine L. Bourdo

Englishwoman Vera followed her love to the fiery trenches of WW1. Working as a nurse in the hospital trenches in France, she hoped to find him and persuade him to run away to America. She finds him, but he dies in her arms.

Vera turns to an American doctor, Frank Murray, for comfort, and ends up pregnant. He convinces her to marry him and go to live with his mother in Columbus, Ohio. The U.S. has not entered the war yet, and Columbus has many German immigrants. Vera is also quite uncomfortable with her new mother-in-law. Dortha. However, when Dortha is accused of murdering a neighbor, Vera believes she is innocent, and works to prove this. She also discovers that Frank, who is still serving in France, chose to go to war because he was on the run from secrets of his own.