Graduating from college at the height of the Vietnam War, Peter Dandridge is in love with a medical student, Stephanie Ames, and longs to splice his life with hers. A football injury should shield him from the draft, and his mother threatens to reserve a cemetery plot if he seeks combat duty. Still, guilt and a longing to confront danger pull him into the war. He ends up in Vietnam as a self-described schoolmarm in jungle fatigues. In a fellow soldier named Rabinowitz, Peter finds a target for his frustration. A spy plot and a Viet Cong ground attack cut short Peter's tour of duty and send him home with a black mark on his service record, along with lingering questions about Rabinowitz. Stephanie prods him to seek answers, and with a small showing of soldierly valor, he does. Those answers prove strange, horrific and—at least by Peter—wholly unforeseen.