The untold story of the female British secret agent forgotten by history.

Longlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The 1952 Coast Guard mission to save the crews of two oil tankers that were torn in half by the force of one of New England's worst nor'easters.

This work describes the monumental accomplishments of the World War II shipyards in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. Working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they built and launched thousands of vessels—Liberty ships, Victory ships, tankers, aircraft carriers, submarine chasers, and many kinds of landing craft—to help defeat the Axis powers and preserve the way of life of the free world. Robert La Du viewed firsthand these activities from his home overlooking shipyards on the Willamette River. His father worked at Albina shipyard, his sister worked at Henry Kaiser's Swan Island shipyard, and he himself, as a high school student, worked nights at Commercial Iron and Steel shipyard. These experiences inform and enhance the pages of Her Finest Hour.

Two lives. One hour. A lifetime consequence. I believe in choice, not fate. I chose to nurse a broken heart at the kitschy country bar that night. I chose to let Isaac Cordova buy me a drink. I chose to spend one hour with a near stranger in an attempt to soothe my pain. No last names, no details about our lives, just one hour where I was allowed to forget, and then we would never see each other again. But was it a choice when I ran into him five years later? I needed help, and he was the only person equipped to give it. Our instant attraction doesn¿t feel like much of a choice either, but it doesn't matter. Everything has changed. Now my choices impact other people.And what will I choose? Do I keep Isaac out?Do I dare to let him in?

This book recreates the tensions and uncertainties of the events of 1940.