Nineteen-year-old Kate Brady's vision of bringing honor to her family and democracy to the Middle East is tarnished when she joins the Army only to be assigned to a forgotten corner of the Iraq desert in 2003 as a prison guard, but she become acquainted with Naema Jassim, an Iraqi medical student whose father and brother are detainees, and through their parallel struggles to survive and hold tight to the people they love, the young women have a profound affect on each other's lives.