Sixteen-year-old Albert Fraser believes that serving in the First World War will make him a man. What he doesn_t realize is the type of man he will become until a shell blast buries him alive in a trench at the Somme. Years later, Albert emerges from the war with a driving need to act, to fill the empty spaces left by the shrapnel that continues to burrow just beneath his skin. Back home in Vancouver, he works to keep busy and when the Great Depression hits, he hits the rails and takes jobs as they come, eventually finding his way to the Yukon, where he learns to live off the land. With no real place to call home, he seems destined to wander aimlessly. But when the Spanish Civil War starts he seeks out Picasso_s Guernica and sees in the painting a reflection of what had been done to him, and what his life has become. Now he travels to Spain, a soldier once more, to reclaim all he has lost — or to die trying.