In this true family story, he makes a choice, she makes a vow.

In the fall of 1941, debates about duty to conscience and obligation to country simmer in the taverns of working-class Philadelphia, and on the pages of Dorothy Day's The Daily Worker. With a troubled heart Catholic pacifist and aspiring artist Edward Hohlfeld grudgingly complies with the draft. Weeks later, his principled stance on the bootcamp firing range turns Edward's life into a nightmare, landing him in a barbaric mental asylum.

Edward's baffling fall from grace alienates him from family and sets his devoted sister Mary on a mission to figure out how his promising life went so awry. While Edward struggles for justice with his mind and humanity intact a world away, Mary follows clues to a dark truth about her brother's fate and the wages of family secrecy as well as the nation's shame.