Ruth MacDoanld is the main character of the book. She is a rich privileged young woman who has heedlessly lived her life with little or no thought to others. One day she meets a former childhood friend going off to war and her eyes begin to open to the needs of others. John Cameron is the young hero going to fight in WWI. John goes off to war, and he and Ruth start sending letters to each other, but the letters were too few and stopped before any real insight or depth of feeling between the couple could appear. Then on the basis of these letters and some actions that John fulfilled when they were both children, the two begin to form an attachment. The characters were detached and hard to really care about. The actions taken by all of them were strange and sometimes difficult to understand. The book is really exciting and interesting.