Will Montgomery is a staff sergeant in the US Army who has just returned home from his active service in Iraq war. Strictly speaking Will has been to hell and back when he has been laid up in various military hospitals for a long time, just waiting for his numerous wounds and shrapnel injuries to heal. Fact is that his scars are not just physical but also emotional and psychological: Back home in the US Will discovers that his girlfriend is not the same person as before he left for Iraq war. This knowledge wounds and injures him emotionally too.
Instead of having the possibility to work his way through rehab at home, Will is reassigned to the so-called Casualty Notification Service. Within this service Will has to assume the serious task of informing relatives of the deaths of their beloved sons and husbands who were killed in action. And it gets even worse for Will when he finds out that he gets partnered with the hard-assed Tony Stone. Tony Stone, a recovering alcoholic, is a slightly unhinged veteran of the Casualty Notification Service. His job consists in teaching Will the do’s and don’ts of informing relatives about the death of their loved ones. Strictly speaking Will has to learn how to avoid making a sad situation like this even worse and more tragic. This is what everyone calls the worst task in war.
Thrown together by the responsibility and duty of their job, Will and Tony travel around the state bringing news of death, tragedy and sadness. Fact is that the two men are facing a variety of situations that are nothing but tough, difficult and challenging: A hysterical mother who has lost his son, a pregnant young wife who finds out about the death of her beloved husband and a furious father who spits in the faces of Will and Tony when learning about his son’s death.
One day Will breaks the golden rule of casualty notification as he develops strong feelings for Olivia Pitterson, a recently widowed woman whom Will delivers the news of the death of her husband …