The year is 1968, a year after the sum­mer of love and the peak of the Viet­nam War. The world is chang­ing, and six­teen-year-old Jon Mosh­er, the only son of Ger­man-Jew­ish refugees who ​“slipped through the clos­ing door with a suit­case apiece and start­ed again” only to lose their first-born to a child­hood acci­dent, is deter­mined to change with it. Wracked by guilt over his old­er broth­er’s death, des­per­ate to lose the bur­dens of the past, Jon turns his rage into vic­to­ries run­ning track, but it isn’t until he meets Ray Cap­pic­ciano, a rebel as gift­ed with his fists as Jon is with his feet, that he rec­og­nizes a friend­ship with the poten­tial to save him. Real­iz­ing that Ray may need res­cu­ing even more than he does, Jon sets off on the race of his life — a race to redeem his past, a race with the poten­tial to save them both.