23-year-old Ohio farm girl Clara Smart doesn’t think much of Japan when she arrives as a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) typist in October 1945. She assists the Women’s Information Officer in encouraging Japanese women to exercise their new right to vote, and as an American woman, she thinks she can teach them a lot about the world, democracy, and women’s rights.

By the time she is sent home—under a cloud of suspicion and in love with a suspected Communist—almost everything she thought she knew is proved wrong.