Sergeant Fergus is a drill instructor at a "boot camp for bad teens," and he is not very good at his job. A young cadet named Haden McCrae picks up on this and gives Fergus a tough time when he tries to help steer him in the right direction. Both of them find out that they have a lot more in common - as screw-ups, as outcasts, as lonely people - than they'd care to acknowledge. The story is essentially about two disconnected people looking for a way out of their isolation, yet not knowing how to find it.
