It is May 1941, and the people of April Grove, Portsmouth, are beginning to feel the war will never end. Families are being torn apart, not only by the separations and loss of war, but by more unexpected frictions, as wives and daughters play new and independent roles, and children are forced to grow up too fast. Betty faces conflict at home over the man that she loves; Carol is desperate to escape her carping mother; and Micky nearly brings tragedy to them all. Yet as the war irredeemably changes their lives, the families of April Grove learn to endure, and even to keep smiling through.