"On a warm night in September, Yvonne Rudellat's house is bombed. Almost everything she owns is destroyed. Yvonne has no one left. She and her husband have long been estranged; her daughter, Jackie, is married and occupied with war work. Yvonne is no use to anyone-older, diminutive, always overlooked. As she prepares to take her own life, fate offers her a new path. Almost no one believes she can do it. She is a woman, unaccustomed to this form of danger. She is too old, too frail for such deadly work. But Britain is on the brink of losing the war, and so she is sent, as an experiment more than anything else, to train as a Special Operative Executive. All too soon, she finds herself alone in the country that was once her home. Her mission: set Europe ablaze and clear the way for the women who come after"--