East Sussex, 1914. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. But just as Beatrice Nash, the teacher, comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.