When Liz Courtney uncovers the remains of a Spitfire in Haggard's Copse, her discovery triggers a chain of supernatural events which evoke the summer of 1940 when Fitzdeverall Field was a fighter station and the Battle of Britain a few short weeks away. Liz finds herself drawn compulsively towards the men and women of Fitzdeverall whose poignant story is played out against the perilous backdrop of England's war-torn skies. Their lives are changed irrevocably by the fateful posting of the young South African pilot, Joel de Vries, from the bleak moors of Cornwall to the sunlit apple orchards of Kent.