In 1946 the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the war Barbara Deniston, now 17, has grown up in Provence, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experiencing collaboration, betrayal and death Banished to England by her mother, she is thrown into conventional life with her father and stepmother Confused and unhappy, she discovers the flowering bomb wastes round St Paul's and here, in the heart of London, she finds an echo of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself