An anti-war college freshman falls in love with the photograph of her roommate's brother who is stationed in Iraq. Claire, a college freshman at 17, is a "gifted and talented" student who has skipped ahead a year in school. Her best friend and mentor is her dad, an historian and anti-current government activist, who has suffered a stroke over the summer and is restricted to a wheel chair. Her mom drops her off at the dorm she's to board in and it is here mother and daughter come upon her roommate's family photograph. Claire comments unfavorably on the trend some young males have today of shaving their heads like the young man, a brother perhaps, in the portrait. Also, he looks as though his nose might have been broken. A rather unattractive man, as far as Claire is concerned, so why can't she get him out of her head? Claire's roommate Kelly assumes Claire is the same age, 19, and of similar background as her other classmates. She invites her home over a weekend that her brother is on leave and talks him into joining the group of high school friends going out on Friday night. Paul joined the Marine Corp out of high school. At 28 he is a Gunnery Sergeant home for a couple of weeks before starting his third tour of duty in Iraq. The family's fiercely held secret is that a sixteen year old Paul impregnated his high school girlfriend. The outcome was an abortion that went wrong leaving the girl unable to have children. Paul's parents are Catholic and opposed to abortion. While his father could forgive his son, his mother would not. Paul's decision to join the Marines was as much an amends to God as a patriotic act to his nation. Paul's guilt at having been a party to the abortion and the girlfriend's condition, felt he could never have children of his own. While a mature young woman in many ways, the only child of a May, December marriage, Claire has been over protected from harm and guarded from intimate relationships. Late to puberty, Claire is just coming into her first stirrings of desire. Paul in the flesh blows Claire away. Her ambition to become a modern day Madame Curie is as far from her mind as Iraq to her school. When Paul asks her to meet him in Boston for a weekend before he catches his plane to return to Iraq, she ditches school, even though it means missing exams she might not be able to make up. Claire's father, learning of her truancy, threatens that if she loses her academic scholarship he will not support her. Paul makes arrangements to take an R&R trip with a fellow officer to Disney World in Orlando, Florida over Claire's spring break. The two men meet Claire and the officer's wife at the airport and spend the week. Claire, not used to taking birth control pills, forgets and gets pregnant. Paul becomes furious with her. She asks him if she should abort. He tells her if she does, he'll kill her. Later, he writes her a letter disclosing the secret of his youth. In the meantime, Claire has had to drop out of the university and is living at home with her parents and attending a community college. She does not write him back, because, as she points out to him later, he didn't say anything that indicated he wanted her to write. His tour of duty over, Paul returns to the states and appears at Claire's school. She is eight months pregnant. He has already made arrangements and tells her they have an appointment at City Hall. To please his folks, they will get married in church later, but this way the baby will be insured without undue red tape. Claire has the baby that night, a month early. Stressed beyond her ability to cope, Claire suffers depression. On their way to Paul's new duty station in Norfolk, Virginia, Paul alludes to the possibility of being assigned to a Navy ship. This could mean deployment again soon.