Dearest Ones, Mom and Dad, I can't thank you enough for your understanding and support of my decision to join the Red Cross. So many think I'm crazy to volunteer, but you understand and I'll always be grateful. Wherever they send me, every day is bound to be challenging, but don't worry. I'll write as often as possible to share this experience as we've always shared others ...

So begins the true-life adventure that takes twenty-five-year-old Rosemary Langheldt from her home in San Francisco to wartime England to serve as an American Red Cross volunteer. In richly detailed and beautifully crafted letters home to her "dearest ones," punctuated with journal entries and official missives, she vividly captures the heady mix of terror, adventure, and loss of World War II.

Through Rosie's journals and letters emerge countless unforgettable scenes: Troops crooning "White Christmas" on the piers as they line up on the gangplanks of ships destined for the Allied Front. A child clutching a teddy bear, fast asleep on a cot deep in the London Underground to avoid the constant bombings. An Edith Piaf performance in liberated Paris. And tea with the King and Queen of England in Buckingham Palace.

To read this book is to share with the independent-minded women of the American Red Cross the feverish celebrations of soldiers on leave. Deflecting the advances of Gls of every stripe, but caught up in the romantic excitement of the times, Rosie and her friends meet and fall in love with their future husbands and make plans for life after the war.