"1927. Flight fever is running rampant and daring flyers are all anyone can talk about. And now the Honourable Miss Elsie Mackay, glamorous former film star and regular name in gossip columns, has a new ambition - to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Stella Campbell was once at the heart of world events. Working at the Paris Peace Conference, she helped forge peace across Europe. Now a decade on, post-war hopes are frayed, and marriage and motherhood have worn away Stella's sense of self until she's not sure what remains. In recent years, Stella's sister Corran has been wrapped up in her books and academic career, determinedly single - or so it seems. But when carefully guarded secrets start to emerge, will she be able to step beyond the constraints of her sex?"
"As the fragile negotiations of the international Peace Conference get underway, typist Stella Rutherford throws herself into her work and the mixture of glamour and devastation the City of Light reveals. Anything to escape the grief coming in waves for her beloved brother Jack. Her sister Corran is about to put her academic career to use among the troops in France, a chance to see what the experience was like for countless men, including her fiancé Rob. Rob Campbell, profoundly changed by his time as a surgeon on the front line, has had little chance to lift his head from the incessant grind of the injured, dying and dead. If he did the ghosts of his teammates, the Scottish rugby players who followed the same path into hell, would surely be waiting for him."