This teen drama follows high-school senior David Wakefield, a talented runner who is set on leading his track-and-field team to victory. As David continues to hone his running skills, he carries on a romance with his pretty sweetheart, Alice Baker, and struggles with other issues that come with the transition to adulthood. Also factoring into David's life is the Vietnam War, with the draft fully underway and young men being regularly called into service.

Jeff and Mari Thompson are contently married, but they are stunned to see many of their friends and neighbors going through separations and divorces. Seemingly surrounded by people with domestic problems, Jeff and Mari begin to question their own relationship.

In March 1970, a U.S. Army officer arrived at the Iowa farm of Peg and Gene Mullen and informed them that their son Michael had been killed in Vietnam by "friendly fire." Their determined attempts to learn more about the circumstances of their son's death are the subject of this true account film.