'Please send snaps of my dear mother and father, my sisters Sarah and Evelyn, and my bonzer little poddy calf, Zeus.'

It's 1917, three years into the Great War, when Edie takes up a teaching post in the small Australian town of York.

Mourning the loss of her beloved brother on the Front and evading her father's plans for a respectable marriage, she's glad to keep busy teaching at Miss Raison's School for Girls. After a little persuasion, Edie agrees to take part in a comfort scheme sending photos of home to the troops.

Edie's new venture throws her into the path of the family secrets, scandals and class complexities of her new town - and a handsome, exasperating man her father would never approve of. With each new encounter, her world gets bigger and more complex, until Edie's asked to make choices that could turn her cautious life upside down - and change the very course of history.