Invisible Wounds
“A whistle in the night. A lifetime in the echo..”
Historical Drama • War • Generational Drama • True Story
When nine-year-old Billy loses the girl he loves during the Bristol Blitz, his parents hide the truth in an attempt to protect him. Their silence instead creates an invisible wound he carries for decades, until confronting Barbara’s memory becomes the only way to finally make peace with the past.
Coming Soon
About the Book
England, 1940
Nine-year-old Billy Leach lives with his parents in the quiet Yorkshire village of Pool-in-Wharfedale while Britain prepares for war. There he meets Barbara Johnston, a young evacuee sent north from Bristol for safety. Amid gas masks, blackout curtains and air-raid drills, the two children form a bond that becomes Billy’s refuge from a frightening world neither of them fully understands.
When Barbara’s parents decide to bring her home, Billy desperately begs them not to take her. Weeks later, on November 24, 1940, German bombers devastate Bristol. Barbara and her parents are killed. Billy’s family learns the truth but, believing they are protecting their son, never tells him what happened. Their silence leaves Billy to carry a child’s unanswered grief—and the belief that somehow he failed the girl he loved.
Billy grows up, emigrates to America and builds a life of his own, but the wound follows him. The whistle of fireworks becomes the sound of falling bombs. New losses reinforce old guilt. Even success as an artist and professor cannot silence memories he was never allowed to grieve. As the decades pass, grief, alcohol and depression gradually force Billy to confront the childhood trauma he has spent a lifetime trying to outrun.
Years later, Billy finally begins speaking Barbara’s name and confronting the truth his parents could never bring themselves to tell him. After his death, his son Jamie returns to Yorkshire carrying his father’s ashes, completing a journey that began between two nine-year-old children more than eighty years earlier.
Invisible Wounds is a true generational historical drama of childhood love, wartime loss, survivor’s guilt and the terrible cost of silence—an exploration of the wounds people carry long after the bombs stop falling.
Book Details
Title: Invisible Wounds
Author: James Leach
Genre: Historical Drama / War / Generational Drama
Setting: Yorkshire & Bristol, England / United States
Timeline: 1940 through Present Day
Format: Historical Novel
Status: Coming Soon
Available: Coming Soon
About the Author
James “JC” Leach, USAF (Ret.) is a U.S. Air Force military veteran, technical writer, instructional designer, and screenwriter whose work blends operational realism, geopolitical tension, and deeply human stakes.
With more than two decades of experience across military aviation, electronic warfare, technical documentation, intelligence-related training, and instructional design, JC brings a combination of field knowledge and narrative discipline to his fiction. His U.S. Air Force career included electronic warfare and airborne systems, thousands of flight hours, and extensive experience working within complex military and aerospace environments.
After years developing screenplays, James brought that same cinematic instinct to long-form fiction, combining visual storytelling, technical authenticity, and character-driven suspense.
JAMES LEACH Author • Screenwriter 