In a rust-belt town near Detroit during the 1980s, Martha, an intelligent but sexually backward high school teacher in her early thirties and Dave, Martha’s older brother, an emotionally scarred, resentful Vietnam veteran fighting alcoholism, live uneasily together in their late parents’ home.

One morning before dawn, Martha is awakened by rambunctious, larger-than-life Joseph Megessey (Megs), who had served with Dave in Vietnam.

Dave has always blamed Megs for the death in combat of their mutual friend Bobby, who had been a source of light and hope in the darkness of war. Megs has spent the past several years working on controlling his drinking and his volcanic, self-destructive emotions, and he has now sought out Dave to convince him to go fishing, something Bobby had promised the three of them would do when they returned home.

Megs’s boisterousness charms Martha, and she helps him to cajole Dave into making the trip. What follows may change the lives of all three for the better.