The working-class Smiths change their initially sunny views on World War I after the five boys of the family witness the harsh reality of trench warfare.
Mary and her friend, Rachel, are new students at St. Francis Academy, a boarding school run by the iron fist of Mother Superior. The immature teens grow bored and begin playing pranks on both the unsuspecting nuns and their unpleasant classmates, becoming a constant thorn in Mother Superior's side. However, as the years pass, Mary and Rachel slowly mature and begin to see the nuns in a different light.
A young nihilistic New Yorker copes with pervasive urban violence, obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, electrical blackouts, paranoia, and ethnic-racial conflict during a typical summer of the 1970s.