A France from Home

Seventeen-year-old Madeline Thorpe-Laurent spends her summer days reading around the ground of the beautiful family home on the Southern English Countryside. Her French Mother and English Father returnj from a holiday abroad to welcome her with an exciting proposition. Her fluency in both languages seems innocent and romantic at the beginning of the tale, when she meets her brother's University friend Peter Larose, as her brother returns from University with the tragic tale of Peter's family loss. The Thorpe-Laurent family, along with Peter, begin a journey to France for a holiday which typically ends in romance blossoming. By the expected and feared outbreak of the Second World War, their romance tightens and is abruptly cut short. Peter and Madeline's brother leave for Paris to join the gathering British forces deployed around France. Madeline and her new friend, the enigmatic Eliza, feel the need to use their linguistic skills to forward the British and French success in Europe, and so they sign up with the British Government as Intelligence Agents, working closely with the French Resistance. War takes its toll, and nothing seems so innocent and romantic any longer.