Based on the best-selling book by Drew Gilpin Faust, this film will explore how the American Civil War created a 'republic of suffering' and will chart the far-reaching social, political, and social changes brought about by the pervasive presence and fear of death during the Civil War.

Three boys gradually begin to change until their close-knit childhood ties are little more than a fractured memory. By war's end, one boy is dead, one returns a physically crippled and emotionally compromised man, and the third comes home as an unfeeling psychopath.