The Sentinel

World War II looms over Whetstone, Ohio, where Evelyn Whittaker is working hard, longing for her husband, and waiting for bad news.

One morning the bad news hits close to home: a fatal accident at the local factory. Evelyn, editor of the weekly newspaper, visits the scene and begins writing yet another tragic story, this time for a civilian hero on the Home Front.

But Evelyn notices that the dead man's widow doesn't seem especially sad, and that the rest of his family is downright hostile. The factory president-a handsome, arrogant outsider-dismisses her questions, determined to get production moving again. The county sheriff isn't talking. And why had the fellow from the War Department been in town, at all? 

The Sentinel is the story of a lonely young woman struggling to maintain the newspaper that has been in her family for nearly a century. Evelyn and her friends spend long days running the businesses their husbands and brothers left behind when they went to war. Picnics, bridge games, and martinis provide soothing distractions, but give way to danger and death.