On an April evening in 1960 great changes come to Sam's young life. He is ten years old and suddenly finds his world turned upside down when his mother leaves him and his father. Over the next few years Sam struggles to build a new life among the friends who offer a helping hand to him. Sam lives in an ideal world of trees and streams and laughter. That world tumbles toward dark night after the tragic shooting of a president in Dallas in November of 1963. Slowly, Sam finds himself facing an irrevocable life decision that will take him away from his new home and into the jungles of Southeast Asia. Sam is told that war changes young men forever. Soon he finds the truth of that statement when his post is struck by a rocket attack. As he recovers from his injuries in an Army hospital, he takes the first tentative steps toward his journey back home to his friends, a journey that will require him to look closely at himself and realize that what he thought was true about his life is not what is important in the end.