Indignation

Marcus Messner is fighting in the Korean War. After an encounter with Chinese troops, he reflects on the choices he made in his life and how they led him to where he is now. In the summer of 1951, before his first year of college, Marcus's synagogue in Newark, New Jersey mourns the death in Korea of one of his classmates. Marcus has been awarded a scholarship to Winesburg College, a private Christian school in Ohio, which allows him to defer the draft. His father, who runs a kosher butcher shop, is unnerved by the deaths in the war of boys like his son and becomes overwhelmed with paranoia.