Alice Bliss

Alice Bliss is fifteen. She's smart, funny and clever. Not afraid to stand up for the things she believes in. She also idolizes her father, and when he leaves home to fight a war she doesn't believe in, Alice is distraught.
She and her mother negotiate his absence as best as they can - waiting impatiently for his letters, throwing themselves into school and work respectively, bickering intermittently and, in Alice's case, falling for the boy next door - but then they're told that he's missing in action and have to face up to the fact that he may never return.