Valentina Camilleri is a teenager, who dreams of adventures and heroes but due to WWII raging across Europe is forced to live in the underground tunnels beneath the city of Valletta.
Malta has become the most strategic and crucial location for the defence of the Mediterranean and eastwards against Hitler and his allies. Valentina invests her adoration to the skies over the capital where brave spitfires scramble daily to protect it from the relentless air raids and sickening bombing by the Luftwaffe.
And then one day, at the top of the city walls, high on the hill, while defying her parents and not heading below ground at the sound of the city’s air raid siren, she fixates on a particular dogfight above Maltese waters.
Her heart is hammering for the acrobatic and daredevil pilot in the spitfire taking on the cunning and agility of a German pilot who is clearly more than his equal…an ace, she’s sure.
And then her heart breaks for her spitfire, bursting into flames, toppling towards the sea. She watches through the flames and smoke for her precious pilot she’s now lost her heart to. Does he bail out? Is he already dead?
A sweeping story across war and peace of a young girl’s ambition to break free from the shackles of her religion, society’s demands, her pre-chosen husband and subservient life.