A sweeping story filled with scenes of love, war, and great personal sacrifice, The Day to Eternity follows three characters who struggle to find their place—and one another—against tremendous odds. Set in the early 1950s against the backdrop of chaotic, war-torn Korea and an enchanting but fragile postwar Japan, the reader is taken deep into the lives of characters whose responses to present adversity and the tortuous pull of the past crucially shape their destinies: Gavin, an American fighter pilot shot down and held behind enemy lines as a prisoner of war; Claire, a missionary nurse, whose overwhelming passions threaten either to destroy or to save her; and Madeline, a British war correspondent with a mysterious past.
A host of fellow characters fills the story with the reality of human contact amid the setback and shocks of war—Brosnan, brother to Gavin and Claire’s cold, unforgiving husband; Father McGwire, who risks everything to establish a Christian mission in the nightmare landscape of South Korea; Soo-keung, the ill-fated North Korean mother who turns against her country and who must cope with man’s inhumanity; and the sinister General Noh, determined to force Gavin to reveal military secrets—or break him in the process.