Lien, an innocent village girl in Vietnam, is missing. Her father, Ngoc, is desperate and with help from a young Australian volunteer overcomes his years of reluctance and writes a letter to his father, a retired American army officer.

Ngoc's letter shocks Peter Trutch. Torn between his sense of honor toward this unknown son and his contentedly pleasant life in Seattle with his devoted wife Catherine, he hurls himself into his past and back to a country and memories that he had left behind forty years earlier.

Lien is sold to a brothel in Cambodia and, in his frantic search...