Kennesaw Hill is a moody loner and veteran of the Vietnam War. Suffering with PTSD and his inability to cope with the demands of everyday life, he wanders without destination until he hitches a ride with Galveston, a fellow veteran who tries to help him on his feet. Brice, a drifter with broken probation, completes the trio, and they all join hands in their struggle for economic survival in the atmosphere of foreclosure, repressive laws, and poverty in America.Set in the rural South during the mid-1970s, Butternut and Brass paints a portrait of the young generation's relation to their past as well as to modern American society and the justice system, and probes into the symbolic nature of Southern heritage.After experiencing a series of grievances from local authority, this trio falls into shady company, and they stumble across the opportunity for retaliation against the police who have hurt them. But this extralegal affair will place them all at further odds with the law, and leads Kennesaw and his friends down a road that will escalate to a violent and explosive conclusion.