Unlike many gung-ho fired up young men who rush off to enlist when America is swept into World War II, Chance Rinehart and Jesse Boone, two men from the little town of Liberty, Georgia, don't want to go. Chance, blond and suntanned, is trying to escape the bone-jarring poverty of his childhood by becoming a world-class tennis star. Jesse the strong, compassionate pastor of a tiny flock of backwoods believers, is struggling to discern God's will for him in a world torn apart by war.