Recent high school graduate Samantha Hughes, 17, lives in fictional Hopewell, Kentucky. Her uncle Emmett Smith, a laid-back Vietnam War veteran, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Samantha's father, Dwayne, was killed in Vietnam at 21 after marrying and impregnating Samantha's mother, Irene. Samantha finds some old photographs, medals, and letters of her father, and becomes obsessed with finding out more about him.