Since 1975 millions of Vietnamese boat people have fled for freedom. By 1993 more than half who survived the exodus resided in California. The film portrays the coming of age story of abandoned kids growing up in the new Vietnamese enclave of Orange County, California in the early 1990s, based on true events.

In 1963 a boy and his mother are left in Saigon while his father and brother flee to seek shelter from religious persecution in North Vietnam. The two brothers meet as strangers in a hapless confrontation during the war in 1973.