Byrski interviews nurses who have never spoken out about their experience, as well as other staff, survivors, and their wives. She approaches her research and her interviewees with sensitivity, academic rigour, and modesty, bringing resolution for the nurses and herself. The result is a balanced, enthralling memoir that fleshes out the history of this wartime medical enterprise, conducted by a surgeon whose mission was to repair not only the bodies of the 'flyers', but their self-esteem and their future. The demands on the nurses and on the local community that welcomed the survivors into the wider world make for a fascinating story.

A former journalist, Byrski succeeds in weaving multiple threads – the history of the hospital, McIndoe's innovative surgery, interviews with survivors and nurses, her childhood memories and her own personal journey – into a seamless story. As a memoir, it is an honest and moving account of a woman searching for the meaning of a story, and of the doubts and revelations that accompany that search.