In October 1900, in Koblenz, Germany, two Jewish cousins - Claire Bernstein and Racheal Goldstein - were born. Over the following decades, their already intertwined lives would become even more so as a result of the two World Wars they were to face and the consequences of a British Flight Navigator surviving a plane crash near Claire's farm.

The Second Son is J.F. Glue's first novel and it follows the generational threads and relationships of the Bernstein and Goldstein families of Germany, and the Mills and Francis families of Britain, from the turn of the century until the 1960s. It explores how we can't always expect people to do what we think they'll do, and the difference it makes when complete strangers do their best to do what's right, despite the threats surrounding them.