When Kitty Green returns to the Gloucestershire school where she was a child evacuee during World World II, her mind is drawn back in time to Tommy Glover. It is 1944. Young Kitty is evacuated from London to Sheepcote village, to live with an unhappy couple, Joyce and Jack Shepherd, who find her Cockney cheerfulness repugnant. "Aunty" Joyce has a phobia about germs, while "Uncle" Jack escapes from his wife in the pages of the Bible. Their role model is the lay preacher Mr. Fairly, principal of the boys' home where Kitty's best friend Tommy Glover is housed. The Shepherds do not approve of Kitty's friendship with Tommy, and even seem to nurse a mysterious hatred for him. Kitty is curious to find out why, and, although an outsider, she is soon welcomed into the nerve center of the village-the knitting group-where secrets gradually slip out. In fact, Kitty befriends all the outsiders in the village: American airmen, gypsies, German POWs, orphans, and, of course, Tommy. In the end, her single-minded determination begins to transform the lives of Joyce and Jack. But, when a long-buried secret is finally uncovered, the lives of nearly everybody in the village are changed forever.