Nazi-occupied Holland, 1944. As soldiers patrol the streets, nursing student Ilse is only just surviving the terrible famine and increasingly violent German occupation. Though exhausted by her demanding work at a hospital far from home, she can’t help but notice Levi, a young man with dark eyes watching the world silently from the abandoned house next door.

Then, early one morning, she finds him terrified and trembling on the back doorstep. Levi’s Jewish family has been arrested and sent to a concentration camp, their likely fate all too clear. And now he needs her help.

So Ilse makes the most dangerous decision of her life and takes Levi in. Hiding him away in her tiny attic room, he must remain concealed or risk almost certain death. But as the war worsens, keeping Levi a secret becomes even more difficult, even as their mutual affection grows. And when a local German soldier becomes obsessed with Ilse, they fear their time—and luck—has run out...

London, present day. When Anna’s father dies, he leaves her a ticket to Amsterdam, a bent silver sixpence on a delicate silver chain, and a note begging her to complete the journey he was never able to.

Based on the author’s incredible family history, this novel is a devastating, but ultimately uplifting, story about a girl who risked everything, including her life, to save the man she loved.