Arise, Brothers

Just prior to the Viet Nam War, three teenage boys meet in the second largest psychiatric hospital in the United States. Two, Charles and Henry, are seventeen-year-old Black youths, who have spent years as patients, and now reside on the most secure unit in the hospital. The third, John, is an attendant, the product of a violent, alcoholic home, a fighter, and caretaker of two younger siblings The three forge an unlikely friendship, testing the boundaries of race, preconceptions, and a vast system of incarceration in psych facilities. They make their individual ways out of the hospital, and into the maw of the military. They finally reunite in Viet Nam, where they embrace a sort of freedom, hardening into men in the crucible of battle. Along the way they learn tough lessons about leadership, love, devotion, and betrayal.