Thirteen-year-old Roberta Harrison navigates the anxieties of adolescence and the encroaching realities of World War II after a impulsive lie forces her to document her life in a diary. Bobby struggles to reconcile her mundane school-age jealousies with the profound instability of a home front defined by absent soldiers and family secrets. Her objective is to maintain a facade of normalcy while her eldest brother and uncle serve overseas, her older brother prepares to enlist, and her sister faces an unplanned pregnancy. The narrative is presented through the intimate, immediate lens of her diary entries, which capture the friction between her internal emotional landscape and the external pressures of a world at war.

This work has received significant recognition within the Canadian literary landscape, earning status as a starred Our Choice Selection from the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Critics and reviewers have noted the effectiveness of blending fictional diary entries with actual historical correspondence to ground the narrative in reality. The book is frequently cited for its ability to balance the trivialities of teenage life with the gravity of wartime uncertainty. Readers often respond to the authenticity of the protagonist's voice as she matures through a period of intense personal and national upheaval.