In 1953, twenty-year-old soldier Jack Parrish is killed in Korea just before the armistice - a meaningless death His mother begins a determined search for answers, turning first to the village rector and then to the local MP Bill Dallas Neither the church nor the government can offer a solution, but she touches the lives of those she talks to - so that the mystery and horror of it consumes them It is finally Dallas's teenage son who resolves to stand up for a world without conscription