Sixteen-year-old Albert Fraser believes that serving in the First World War will make him a man; but after a shell blast buries him alive in a trench, he instead finds himself without a sense of self or purpose. Spending the next few years on the road and rails, taking whatever jobs he can, Albert seems destined to be a constant wanderer, until an exhibition of Picasso's Guernica shows him where his life went wrong, and what he must do to set it right.