I understand suddenly why I'm running. I need to warn them about the pressure switch, hidden in the crack in the road. The driver won't see it. They don't have a chance. I wave my arms, a heartbeat before the whole nasty serpent shrieks to life, and fill my lungs to cry out. And then, like always, I wake up...

It is the early months of the Arab Spring, 2011. But for three young men, two American and one Iraqi, their minds return again and again to 2006, to the bloodiest stretch of the Iraq War. Members of the same platoon, they were tasked with the often deadly job of repairing potholes in the roads of the Al Anbar Province: potholes that almost always concealed a home-made bomb. They have survived the war but now they must learn to live with themselves.

Discharged without honour, medic Doc Pleasant returns to his impoverished hometown to face his failures, both real and imagined.