In 1940’s New York, Josephine, a young college student at Barnard, has great aspirations of becoming an author, but suffers from crippling writer's block, unsatisfied with her ordinary life. When a chance meeting in a diner turns into an unexpected sexual encounter with dreamy young soldier John Quinn her perspective of the world is turned upside down. She teams up with Mr. Thomas Grant, the young heir to a steel empire to help WWII veterans. Together, they devise a plan to organize a one-woman pen-pal service, writing letters to single soldiers around the world, recounting stories of the wild, brave acts she commits at home to help the boys abroad. However, the stories she tells are lies, works of fiction designed to entertain the masses, rather than the personal, individualized letters she promised to deliver. Finishing her debut novel and running a successful business, Josephine is quickly disillusioned by her newfound success when soldiers return to the home front, damaged and in love with the fictionalized version of herself she created on the page.