The time is nine months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The setting is a pair of small factory towns, divided by a river and nestled in a valley in America. The characters are a boy and a girl, struggling to carve out their place in the world. Michael DeMarco is twenty years old and full of hopes and dreams. Cecelia Alberino, beginning her senior year of high school, is beautiful and talented. As first generation Italian-Americans, they realize they have incredibly similar families. Both dream of breaking through the dull routine of their lives, setting themselves free of their humble family backgrounds, and doing something remarkable. When fate brings them together again and again, the two share their challenges and their love, but from afar since Michael has enlisted and is training to fight in World War II.

In this captivating novel, the reader is transported to the turbulent wartime era and also given glimpses of the Great Depression as experienced by two young people growing up and coming of age during these historic back-to-back eras. What are the Chances? - dramatic, comical, and heartbreaking - is a story of what it meant to grow up as the children of immigrants during the 1930s and 1940s. It is a story of the complexity of dreams and the overcoming of obstacles. It is a story of love, of perseverance, and of destiny.