Plot summary

(spoilers) A film based on the best selling book of the same name by Meg Rossoff. Fifteen year old Elizabeth, Daisy, as she prefers to be known, is sent by her father and stepmother to live with her cousins Osbert, Isaac, Edmond and Piper, and her Aunt Penn, in England. Over time she comes to appreciate her cousins and strikes up a strong bond with all of them, especially the semi-telepathic, precocious Edmond. Daisy adapts to the English countryside lifestyle and begins to feel at home for the first time in her life, and barely notices the whispers about war that begin to circulate, until Aunt Penn is sent away to aid the Peace Process. With the departure and subsequent disappearance of Aunt Penn, and no adults left to supervise the children, Daisy and Edmond's relationship soon blossoms into something that is a little more than cousinly love. However, her new found idyllic life in the country is soon shattered by the advance of the Third World War, and she and Piper are sent away from Edmond, Isaac and Osbert. Surrounded by enemies during the futuristic "occupation", Daisy must find a way to reunite the family through all the bloodshed before their lives are ruined by the separation and the horrors of the war. When she finally returns home with Piper, after witnessing horrifying events, she finds a broken Edmond, also returned home. She tries to nurse Edmond back to health, and that is how she lives now.