A North Carolina Farm boy enlists, and in the early hours of D-day, he is wounded on the cliffs at Pointe Du Hoc. Hisd injuries take him to the Woodrow Wilson Army hospital in Augusta County, Virginia. On discharge and arrival home, he realizes that his wounds have ended any future as a farmer. He returns to the Shenandoah Valley to drive an oil delivery truck that supplies crossroads' general stores. His war has been short, but long enough that he has to learn to cope with the truths -spoken and unspoken, that prior generations have known- about the consequences of war. His journey takes him along the county back roads and farmsteads, to the state mental hospital, and the secrets of beekeeping remembered from childhood.