"This story of an average English middle-class family begins with the summer of 1939; when the sun shone down on a happy, careless people, who worked and played, reared their children and tended their gardens in that happy, easy-going England that was so soon to be fighting desperately for her way of life and for life itself." -- Title screens. [The film] dramatizes the effect of the Second World War on the English at home. Mrs. Kay Miniver's tranquil domestic existence is torn to shreds by the winds of war: her husband, Clem, disappears on a secret volunteer mission; eldest son, Vin, joins the RAF; and the village faces regular German bombings with a typically British stiff-upper-lip. Embodying understated British courage in the face of danger, Mrs. Miniver's mission is to stay alive, and keep her family together with hope, strength, and dignity.