In the spring of 2005, a mother living in Hanoi receives a diary of her late daughter, a young doctor working at a field hospital during the war. Kept for over thirty years by an American veteran, the diary is an account of her life spanning two years, from April 1968 until her death in June 1970.

At the close of the Sino-Vietnamese border war, a journalist travels to Lạng Sơn in northern Vietnam—the hometown of his former girlfriend—to report on the situation there.