On the European front, World War II was raging, but the United States had not yet entered the conflict. For six-year-old Lu, her idyllic childhood in the hills of Issaquah consisted of adventures with farmyard pets, toadstools, and tree stump castles. However, her little world would change drastically with news of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Told from the perspective of a young girl, the historical fiction closely follows the true stories of families in rural Western Washington during the 1940s.