It's the decade of free love in America, but Magnus Larsson is AWOL. Naïve and confused, he isn't gettin' any, free or otherwise. What he used to get were good grades, good enough to get him trained as a leader of men in Vietnam. There, however, he discovers that practical knowledge and common sense are more valuable than his cumulative grade point average. By the time of his second tour, Manny begins to suspect that many of the pacification projects assigned to him and his construction team have been chosen more for how they look on somebody's report than how they help the local populace. With family skeletons and emotional vulnerabilities, he seems destined to fail. His confusion with the land and its people combines with unresolved issues from his past, causing him to seek the anesthetizing quality of alcohol. Happily, a woman comes into his life. Miss Nguyen Thi Luu is an interpreter for the Army Advisory Team who has family problems of her own. But of the girls Manny has known, Miss Luu alone exhibits such a calm sense of realism. Though their cultures are polar opposites, it is this simplicity to which Manny can relate. Miss Luu's life becomes intertwined with Manny's, but she is drawn as well into U.S. counterinsurgency operations when her old friend, Miss Phuong, gets mixed up with members of the National Liberation Front. Her challenge evolves to survival as the Communists take over the country. Manny and Miss Luu are attracted to one another, but Manny's guilt for screwing up the lives of those around him points toward suicide. Love and spiritual meaning are locked in a battle against social dysfunction and manic depression in this story where heroes and angels are found in unlikely places.