Two weeks before his departure to Vietnam, Second Lieutenant Martin Shadows’s father encourages him to visit his Lakota Sioux grandfather in Montana, a man he has seen only once as a boy.

When Grandfather Two Shadows begins telling him of his visions concerning Martin’s
upcoming tour of duty in Vietnam, the young lieutenant is non-plussed by the old man’s revelations.

As a newly commissioned U.S. Army Officer, he finds tales of himself leaping from
trees to slay his enemies with a knife and riding the fiery breath of a great bird into the
mountains are a bit beyond the pale—if not totally bizarre. Only when these predictions begin coming to pass, does Martin wish he had listened more closely.