As the Chinese and the army of the North sweep south during the Korean War, an old peasant farmer and his wife flee their village across the bleak, bombed-out landscape.
They soon come upon a boy in a ditch who is wounded and unconscious. Stirred by possessiveness and caring the woman refuses to leave the boy behind.
Potok writes powerfully about the suffering of innocent people caught in the cross-fire of a war they cannot begin to understand.