A collection of interconnected stories relate the experiences of Fort Hood military wives who share a poignant vigil during which they raise children while waiting for their husbands to return.

In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer "on loan" to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the "wretchedness" she sees all around her. When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with...

Hiding her clandestine activities behind the persona of a model Nazi soldier's wife at the height of World War II, Sigrid Schroeder dreams of her former Jewish lover and risks everything to hide a mother and two young children who she believes might be her lover's family.

Margaret Mayfield needs to get married. In a fit of desperation, she weds an eccentric scientist. As her husband's obsessions with science take a darker turn on the eve of World War II, Margaret is forced to consider the life she has so carefully constructed.