Alan van Ransom

The Waist Gunner Alan van Ransom

In 1941, sixteen-year-old Emma Bellerose and her family are nearly killed while escaping Saint-Nazaire, France, targeted for destruction by the Nazi regime. The Bellerose family finds refuge in an abandoned church with other families left homeless and destitute by the devastation. Two years later, they continue to make do in their makeshift shelter. Meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Bill McLaughton, a US military waist gunner, has a persistent nightmare, one that he can't figure out. He has been assigned to an RAF bomber base in Polebrook, England, and although Bill has had a rather uninteresting life, that is all about to change. When his plane is shot down over the French countryside, the Bellerose family finds him and takes him to safety. As they nurse him back to health, Bill and Emma soon find themselves falling in love. But with the war, anything can happen-and Bill's nightmare becomes more and more ominous. Only time will tell whether they can find peace and happiness together. In this historical novel, a US airman in World War II plagued by nightmares is shot down over France, where he meets a young woman who changes his life forever.