Fifteen years ago, the war against the aliens took one boy from every poor family in Millbrook, and Grace Dawson carved her son Luke’s draft number into her own wrist so she would never forget it. Now Luke is the Admiral who ended the war, and the President has told the world that the hero was a Millbrook boy coming home, without giving his name or face. Luke slips into town early in plain clothes to find his family, but the Cranes, who own the town and took his family’s farm, have the whole of Millbrook calling him a con man who preys on grieving mothers. He’s beaten, jailed and made to serve drinks at the Crane wedding, not knowing that the bride is his little sister and the woman the town calls crazy, who waits at the bus stop every day, is his mother.
