1942. In the tropical splendour of the South China sea, as the second World War spreads across the far east, a young woman finds herself in paradise...and then in hell. Nurse Carrie Sutton is caught up in the Japanese invasion of Singapore, suffering horrors beyond her wildest nightmares. Now she attempts to start her life anew, buoyed up by a growing friendship with a wounded pilot, only for fate to deliver up the last thing she ever expected. Carrie at last has the chance for revenge, but should she take it? In the midst of a world town apart by war, you can fight and you can win, but you still might not get the things you truly want.

Details the bloody defeat of the supposedly impregnable Singapore by the Japanese in 1942, an event which signaled the end of European colonial empires in the Far East.