John Dante is 17 years old when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Filled with patriotic fervor and a desire for revenge, he decides to enlist. This is against the wishes of Ginny Burton, the girl he loves, who suggests he register as a conscientious objector. While fighting, all his ideas of heroism are destroyed the reality of war and its horrors, and he returns home disillusioned. Narrated fifty years later and living in Canada, John is haunted by the war--and by Ginny, his only love.