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. Albert emerges from the war with a driving need to fill the empty spaces left by the shrapnel that continues to burrow beneath his skin. Back home in Vancouver, he works to keep busy and when the Great Depression hits, he rides the rails and takes jobs as they come, eventually finding his way to the Yukon. But with no real place to call home, he seems destined to wander aimlessly. When the Spanish Civil War erupts, he seeks out Picasso's Guernica and sees in the painting a reflection of what his life has become. Now he travels to Spain, a soldier once more, to reclaim all he has lost -- or to die trying.