For Scottie and his mates it's been a year of dead-end jobs and killing time. When his girlfriend Mel makes a go of a career, Scottie comes to a decision that will change his life forever - to join the army. It will bring him more money than he's ever known, teach him skills he's never imagined, and lead him to discover things about himself he'd never have believed. His job will carry him from the depraved housing project of his birth to a land that's foreign in every conceivable way. And it will bring him home again across thousands of miles to face the future and the past, and ultimately lead to a confrontation with an awful, undeniable truth.