The three stories cover her work from October 1938 until mid 1946 (the war ended in 1945).

In chronological terms the stories do not take place from start (1938) to finish (1946).

This is because they are about her anguish as well as the 'facts' of her work

ONE: set in the USA with some references her back story in the UK.... begins at the End (1945/6) -- what did she really achieve and how does she survive into the future (and her child, whose father she will not name and so illegitimate in the terminology of the time)?

TWO: set mainly in the UK.... begins at the beginning (1938) -- how does she make her mark at 24 having to confront senior men who often do not want to confront her? And how does she make sense of a marriage where she is loved but not as much as the other partner?

THREE: set entirely in the USA with back reference to British days: how does she survive in a hostile (British secret service) environment. dealing with high level professional tension and with patched up affairs to substitute for a husband she cannot see or even meet?

BOOK ONE:: this is the end of her story, even though book one. At the end of 1945 Nathalie Armstrong is in jail. How does she get out – escapes and changes her identity. Why is she there? And what can she do to survive with a new identity?

This story of being the underground scientist whish she wrote during her escape is discovered by her grand daughter in 2018. Francine Olnay was actually parented by Sonia Olnay who she did not know was Nathalie Armstrong. The reactions of the grand daughter, Francine Olnay and the effect on the family of discovering Nathalie’s achievement as underground scientist.

She is in trouble because she did the right thing. And she is in trouble because she did something else, lied and lied about herself.

To be rehabilitated by those who hired her she has to tell that story. It is also the story of what she has never revealed, by whom she was pregnant when jailed and escaping.

BOOK TWO: covers her being hired and why it is possible for a young married woman who is, rarely for women then, a biochemist… just married ... how is it possible ...to life apart from her husband and not work in biochemistry but in a role that examines the underbelly of science.

The husband, David Armstrong, is the man she adores, who rescued her from bad psychological problems and who supports her in work.

          He also has a homosexual marriage and she knows, with homosexuality criminalized that she must mention this to no one.  

          Hired against the odds as Underground Scientist, she proves herself for her analysis of deep quarrels in British war science and the way key technologies in infra red, atomic fission and radar are nearly set aside.

          She then discovers that the men who believe in this work want to take it to the USA. They think they will develop a good working alliance and she and her people (and her husband, a student of the rise and fall of empires) fear they will not.

          With a marriage declining and unable to survive the pressures on it – the husband blackmailed to give information about what she does – should she go to the USA to track the fate of world leading British work?

          Who will she become? And what will she find… either theft of leading British work by the USA or absurd stupidity by the British in assuming American good will?

          Her grand daughter’s role in finding this second volume plays into this as in the first volume.

Once again this book has a contemporary (2024) root as it intertwines with Francine Olnay’s discovery of the story and its effect on she and her mother.

BOOK THREE: contrary to advice she has to deliver, the British will not show prudence or seek a deal. The Americans have either stolen or been given  on the most generous terms, two year leads in British radar and atomic fission. These technologies are to prove game changing in the war. The British scientists expected to share their discoveries only to find they are shut out of the work that started as theirs. It’s a hard lesson in American ruthlessness. So arrogant towards the USA are the British, they do not even see what has happened to them.

          Similar spoken language, Britain and the USA, very different business culture. She learns from the men who run her.

          All she and her people (who are high powered and should be influential) can do, is observe. Churchill, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, proud of his ‘special relationship’ with President Roosevelt is, she is sure, deluded. Thinking the Americans will share everything scientific with the British, that is not the case at all, as Nathalie knows. The new drug penicillin is brought to the USA on a similar aura of hope.

          It falls into American hands. British scientists are shut out of their own work. Nor do the Americans really comprehend what they have taken (or stolen) and tried to patent. That is when Nathalie authorized to change sides and penetrate the American military medical service which declares penicillin to new to be of interest. She and her people think differently. Better effective penicillin in American hands than in no hands at all. And that is when the British secret service really do trip her up.

          She is a single and still young woman in a massive international power struggle that goes askew, until she knows enough of the pieces to be able to propose how to put it right. Nor is it easy, to be celibate, to be threatened with assault, to patch together love as you can and think safe. Her people see her as significantly influential and effective in terms of developing battlefield penicillin.