Young Michael Morpurgo always loved the small painting of a boat hanging on Aunty Iris’s wall. But all she would ever say about it was that her beloved Alfie had painted it and given it to her years ago—before he’d left for France during World War II and had never come back. Michael decides to try and find out what happened to Alfie himself. He embarks on a journey that takes him to the marshes of an English coastal village and across the Channel into France, learning a profound lesson along the way about service and the surprising endurance of memory.