On July 17th, 1939, Eileen Alexander began a brilliant correspondence with fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen that lasts five years and spans many hundreds of letters. But as their friendship deepened into love, the tensions between Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe reached a crescendo. When war was declared, Gershon went to Cairo and Eileen set aside her studies to work in the Air Ministry. Written over the course of the conflict, Eileen's letters chronicle a long-distance romance of the Greatest Generation, and also offer a vivid, personal glimpse of this historic era, particularly the Blitz that tested the resolve of Londoners but could not break it.

"These remarkable letters, worldly yet innocent, full of youthful buoyancy and romantic longing, take us behind the myths of wartime London to show us daily life as it was actually being lived. Gossipy and amusingly observant, this is history at its most personal."—Joseph Kanon