Bridie O'Connor is the most intriguing character Finn and his fourth-grade classmates have ever met. She is fearless, willing to say absolutely anything that comes into her mind, and everything about her is messy and a little off. It is love at first sight for Finn, but it will be almost a decade before he is ready to admit it.

Finn is a quiet boy and something of an outsider, owing to his gimpy leg. He and Bridie grow up a few houses apart in a small New Jersey community during the 1940s - a time and place evoked here to perfection - where the specter of war looms large in everyone's life.

Too old to go to war, Finn's father enters the service vicariously by signing enlistment papers for his just-underage son Fritz. The loss is tremendous for Finn and irreparable for his mother, who withdraws from the family entirely. Left alone, Finn and his father maintain an awkward relationship, speaking little and communicating less.

Bridie and Finn spend a decade keeping the closest of company. They seem destined to remain together for life, but people and circumstances appear to be conspiring against them. In a disturbing and startling conclusion, Bridie reveals - during their closest moment - a truth that alters forever the nature of their friendship. In graceful and seamless prose, Harry Gauley captures the world of the close-knit urban community, and a way of life that exists no more.