Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War, who after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just his physical scars. His home seems alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to their small hometown in Georgia. As he revisits his childhood memories and those of the war that left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.