Tommy Stern has never gotten over the suicide of his best friend, Ben Lowe, who in the summer of 1951 is found hanging from a tree in the woods behind their high school in Huntsville, Alabama. A year earlier, Huntsville becomes home to 118 former Nazi scientists and engineers who have been brought to the United States through a secret government-sponsored project called Operation Paperclip to work on the space program. Even past evidence of war crimes does not disqualify these men from entering the United States.Eighteen years later, the discovery of a journal is the catalyst that encourages Tommy to reexamine the facts that led to his friend's death. Ben is Jewish and a survivor of the Holocaust. The journal leads Tommy to believe that there is a connection between Ben's untimely and horrific final moments and the arrival of the Germans.Tommy's search for the truth takes him back to Huntsville where he rekindles a relationship with his high school girlfriend Karin Angel, the daughter of one of the German scientists. Karin and Tommy join forces to discover the dark secrets of Operation Paperclip and the truth behind what happened to Ben.