Blood-Mound Park's finest pitcher, Bronson 'Bumfoot' McBee, seventeen, is charged with First-Degree Murder. However, given the circumstance of his crime, and him being a juvenile, he's given a plea bargain: Twenty-five to life, or to serve in Vietnam. Opting for the latter, he's torn away from a world of promise--to don the steel pot, olive-drabs and jungle boots as an infantryman assigned to Alpha Company of the 101st Airborne Division.
Backed by his Boonie brothers, he'll have to take the arduous hump through the treacherous trails and mountains of Binh Thuan Province and other 'hairy' regions of South Vietnam. There, everything he holds dear--from the letters of his love, to the Oglala Lakota lore of his mother--serve as his pillars of hope.
Nonetheless, the obscenities of the war and the stacking losses of life start to wither the psyche--breaking him down while, conversely, inuring him to the idea that, plea deal or not, his chance at survival is as slim as it was to those who gave all. Now, left to teeter on the flimsy line of fate, he realizes his path to redemption, initially taken up as a "bargain", starts to look no different than a certain death sentence. .
