Overview

In the last months of WWII, Pascale Tailland, an American translator serving in the U.S. Women's Army Corps bound west out of Germany with her unit, sees a refugee on the station platform wistfully contemplating her train. The refugee is dressed like a young man, but Pascale, intuitively knowing that it is a woman, pulls her aboard as the train starts to roll.

These two women, thrown together by chance, torn apart by the destruction in wartime Europe, struggle to find each other again across a chaotic continent. The soldier is as fearless with her heart as with her ideals; the Polish refugee, who has survived years of desperation and danger, has the cunning of a wolf.

In their attempts to reunite they are hindered, helped, and loved by many women. There's Nell Tulliver, international war correspondent — hard-boiled, soft-hearted, and well-connected; Captain Corinne West, a competent and proper officer, unduly influenced by love as she bends military rules; and Sibylle Benard, a French prostitute and German collaborator — a woman who got by as best she could by relying on the available men — now falling in love with a woman.