'Fats' Bannerman is enjoying success as the writer and presenter of Thus Engaged, a romantic radio serial about the lives and loves of a Regency heroine. But when grim reality violently intrudes into Fats' life, his frail fantasies become unbalanced and his ability to separate fact from fiction breaks down, with devastating consequences.

A group of American Army nurses are captured by the Japanese in April 1942 and spend three years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Bataan. Lt Margaret Ann Jessup, the head army nurse, survives the camp and testifies against the Japanese in front of the United States Congressional subcommittee years later as a colonel.