After losing his wife to cancer, Hank Garvey volunteers to serve as a Political Officer embedded with special operations troops in the early days of the Afghanistan war. Little about his new circumstances is as he expected, and all of it is very different from his time as a young soldier in Vietnam. But it is only when he falls in love with a beautiful Danish nurse that he realizes that nothing is as it appears to be. Returning to Virginia at the end of his tour of duty, Hank tries to rebuild his life, only to confront a new tragedy. A chance meeting with a country preacher at last sets him on the path to coming to terms with not just grief and folly, but with the eternal nature of love in its many forms.