It’s 1915 and sixteen-year-old Flora Wentworth is in Cairo with her archaeologist father. Flora watches with alarm as first a trickle, and then a flood, of wounded soldiers are shipped into the city from Gallipoli. Newly-grown-up Flora has dreamed of a glittering social life in Cairo. Now, her dreams are set aside as she volunteers to assist exhausted, overburdened medical staff. She is soon transporting injured soldiers and helping out in overcrowded hospital wards – set up in every suitable, and unsuitable, building that can be found in a city in crisis. But Flora still manages to fall in love, a little, along the way. Then, as she battles to save lives, and find her own, a tragic misunderstanding changes everything …