Deborah Birch is a hospice nurse who cares deeply for her patients and helps them transition through their final days, but she cannot seem to help her veteran husband recover from his last deployment as a sharpshooter. Her husband's anguish is destroying her relationship and she cannot seem still his rage. In the meantime she is assigned to former history professor Barclay Reed, who proves to be a difficult patient who is not ready to die. Dr, Reed has been discredited for plagiarizing a book and her dares Nurse Birch to read one of his manuscripts without researching the subject, Japan's attacks on the Pacific Northwest. What she learns from reading the manuscript and talking with her patient could change both of their lives.

The book is different. It is two separate stories woven together. As the main characters read through the story of a WWII fighter pilot and the town he tried to bomb, they learn lessons that help them deal with their lives today.