One glance, and the young soldier was spellbound. He strode across the mess hall and locked eyes with a regal woman in a nurse’s uniform.

“You should know my name,” he said. “I’m the man who’s going to marry you.”

She nearly laughed aloud: a Nazi prisoner of war and an African-American US Army officer in the middle of World War II? Ridiculous.

But Friedrich Albert had it right: Elinor Powell was the girl of his dreams. Their secret romance began, for her, as a rebellion against the segregated Army’s racism — and deepened into a passion that overcame both war and prejudice.