Severely scarred in the wake of three years in a Vietnamese POW camp, Gordon Talbott returns home buoyed by the desire to rebuild his life and reap the expected rewards for his service. Instead, he finds himself overwhelmed by drastic changes not only in his personal circumstances, but to that of the nation to which he scarcely belongs.

Obsessed with the desire to find some meaning in his life's wreckage, Gordon engages in a series of dead-end pursuits rather than confronting the phantoms he brought back with him from the war, until... well that's what the story is about.