A fifteen-year-old struggles to make sense as the nation is thrown into shock and turmoil by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. His helps: the songs of Bob Dylan and the publications of an apocalyptic sect, the Worldwide Church of God. Over the next few years, he oscillates between these two influences as they help shape his identity. In the process, he struggles with his ambivalent feelings toward his heritage, one-half German immigrant in a world haunted by the ghosts of Auschwitz, the other Southern white at a time when the civil rights movement shattered self-satisfied notions of justice and equality. Music-making, first romances, travel to his father's homeland (still in the process of rebuilding), and grappling with what it means to live a life of faith intertwine against the background of a society in upheaval, when it was easy to believe that the end of the world was imminent.