Kay's novel begins when a stranger, Noah Locke, a gifted fisherman and war veteran, comes to Bowerstown, N.C. Noah had been with the 42nd Infantry when they liberated Dachau and the images still haunt him. The residents take an interest in the mysterious young man and encourage him to stay until the town's annual fishing contest. Littleberry Davis, the six-time champion, has become arrogant and the townspeople would like to see him taken down a peg. Noah agrees to stay and is given a room by a young widow whose soldier husband killed himself shortly after returning home from the war. The novel ends with a miracle--a sign that Noah has found home at last.

At the beginning of Carcaterra's novel, the only ones left in the bombed-out city of Naples, Italy, in the fall of 1943 are the abandoned children. In their goal to survive, they become fearless fighters (and the unlikeliest heroes of WW II), taking on the German army with just a handful of guns, unexploded bombs, and their own ingenuity.