The Richardsons love America, FDR, and their family-rich life in the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1941, World War II offers their young ones chances for heroism. To the older folks, heroism is equivalent to heartbreak. Nevertheless, troubled by the clouds of war, their young leave the nest. Teenager Dana dreams of flying like her wild uncle Charles. Howard wants to be a major league ballplayer. Walt turns to pumping gas, until he finds a more dangerous way to satisfy his love of adventure. All of them become ordinary patriots. But just a few months after Pearl Harbor, FDR's Executive Order 9066 creates Manzanar: one of ten prisons for American citizens who happen to be Japanese. This one is right in the Richardsons' neighborhood. Manzanar, with its extremes of heat and cold, its blowing sands and constant winds, is now guarded by armed soldiers, barbed wire fences, and search lights. The Richardsons are dismayed. But somebody local will have to help run the place. How will our friends, the patriotic Richardsons, rise to the challenge?