The award-winning novel is set in the midst of the worst war in recorded history in Europe. In New Zealand, brothers William and Edmund, both patriots, face a difficult test: William immediately proudly enlists in the military to serve his country honorably, while the younger Edmund refuses to bear arms, believing that arms in the name of peace will only bring more misery. He becomes a war dissenter, arrested and imprisoned as a despicable traitor to his homeland. In bitter but heartfelt letters to their mother, they each reveal their own experiences of the same war.
The two brothers' different paths cross in France during the bloody Battle of the Somme, where the former fights with weapons in hand, while the latter helps carry and care for the wounded from the trenches. Their emotional journey, which tests and shakes their values, beliefs and expectations, only ends with the end of the war. Anger and hatred are replaced by respect.