Wartime, 1944, in the British Columbia Interior—a farm boy becomes curious about the predicament of two Japanese-Canadian teenagers marooned on a nearby farm with their families, unable to live in their former homes on the coast. His friendship with the girl, Toshiko, blossoms into a kind of Romeo-and-Juliet romance, then a scandal. Thrown out of his house by his racist father, he sets off with her on a freight train bound for Vancouver.