Thirty-three-year-old Luke “Pax” Paxton has been out of the US military for almost a decade, haunted by a mistake made in an unforgiving moment of combat. When an old army friend suggests they travel to Ukraine to help fight against the Russian invasion, he agrees, and together they cross an ocean to Lviv, the City of Lions. He carries with him the address of a former love, a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana whom he had known as a young soldier. His feverish journey through Lviv takes him down winding and missile-cratered streets as he forms surprising connections. And when Pax gets the chance to save someone dear to Svitlana, he just might be able to correct the wrongs that have wracked him with guilt for so many years.

Thirty years after its great triumph in Vietnam, the United States has again become mired in an endless foreign war overseas. Stories of super soldiers known as the Volunteers tuck in little American boys and girls every night. Yet domestic politics are aflame. Violent protests erupt throughout the nation. An ex-military watchdog group clashes with police, while radical terrorists threaten to expose government experiments within the veteran rehabilitation colonies. Halfway between war and peace, the Volunteers find themselves waiting for orders in the vast American city-state, Empire City. There they encounter a small group of civilians who know the truth about their powers. Through it all, a controversial retired general emerges as a frontrunner in the presidential campaign, promising to save the country from itself.

The US military is preparing to withdraw from Iraq, and newly minted lieutenant Jack Porter struggles to accept how it’s happening --- through alliances with warlords who have Arab and American blood on their hands. His world is disrupted by the arrival of veteran Sergeant Daniel Chambers, whose aggressive style threatens to undermine the fragile peace that the troops have worked hard to establish. As Iraq plunges back into chaos and bloodshed, and Chambers’ influence over the men grows stronger, Jack becomes obsessed with a strange, tragic tale of reckless love between a lost American soldier and Rana, a local sheikh’s daughter.