Steve Moore is sixteen and lives with his younger sister, mother Cheryl and her boyfriend John, in a modest house in Bakersfield, California. An abusive and often intoxicated man, John rules the household, and though his attacks on Steve result in emergency hospital visits, Cheryl's loyalty is to her boyfriend. To protect her relationship with John, she "ditches" her son, having him arrested and locked in a correctional "mental" facility, before coercing her older brother Burt, who lives in Hollywood, to take him. Steve quickly discovers that Burt cannot even provide temporary lodging, but an administrator at his new high school directs him to a shelter for runaway kids where he soon learns to navigate his way.

In 1964 in Laos, young Tim Page discovers his vocation as a photojournalist and is given a job, a camera, and a trip to Vietnam. There, he learns the ropes, learns about the war first in Saigon, and then "in country" on patrol with troops. He and his colleagues, including the sons of Errol Flynn and John Steinbeck, capture the war in pictures, recover from their wounds, swap stories, battle censorship, and support each other between the explosions at the brothel run by Tranh Ki: "Frankie's House".

A possible impostor torments a newly crowned medieval czar who may have ordered the real successor's death.