The play begins a few years into the war, when Robert Harding decides he needs to prove himself by enlisting to fight abroad, leaving his wife and children to manage the family farm on their own.
His daughter, Joan, has her own ideas about how things should be done, while his wife Mary only wishes that things would remain as they were. The arrival of an evacuee into the Harding home, Americans on Dartmoor and other events based on true-life stories trigger the family’s eventual need to find their way back to each other.