American Bombshell P/B

A 1940’s coming of age story of seventeen-year-old Rosie Haskell, a working-class girl who, despite a rocky start in life, begins a journey of self-discovery, love and loss in the bombed north-of-England in the fifth year of world war two.

Though intelligent, Rosie is naïve. She seeks acceptance & love in an adult world, but it is not as she imagined. She begins her first job at a radio factory. At a dance she meets Eugene, a glamorous Irish American pilot, a dash of Hollywood in a drab English town. Despite his outward appearance, Eugene is falling apart due to the horror of flying his B17 bomber over Germany. Secretly he keeps himself going through a cocktail of sex, drink, and illegal drugs.

Restrained by the rules of society, Rosie tiptoes around physical intimacy with Eugene. Things become more complicated when Hazel, a tough motorcycle-riding Yorkshire woman, enters the picture. Rosie loses her home, and caught at a vulnerable moment, is seduced by Hazel in what is Rosie’s first sexual experience.

In the summer of 1944, as D-Day and the invasion of Europe draw closer, a three-way relationship evolves between Rosie, Hazel and Eugene in which, despite pressure from both suitors, Rosie tries to make sense of her own feelings and steer her own course. The war intervenes dramatically when a German flying bomb nearly kills them all. The proximity of death impels a choice that will change her life forever.