Edwin Horst, a German soldier and only fifteen years old, has been captured by the Americans in France shortly after D-Day.

Now, he finds himself in a POW camp in Michigan, one of over 400,000 prisoners of war brought to the United States. After he and his friend, Henri, find another prisoner mysteriously hanged, their lives are threatened by an underground Nazi organization within the camp. They are helped by Sam Demsky who, as part of a secret government program, is trying to teach the prisoners about democracy, and by Doris Calloway, a real “Rosie the Riveter” from Kentucky.

All of them are connected to a local German-American family, whose members are struggling to define their relationships with each other, their new country and their German past.