Tu Hau is a common woman from a fishing village whose husband has gone away to fight in the revolution. She takes care of her young daughter as well as her aging father-in-law. Soon, her peaceful village is attacked.
A general who devoted his life to the communist cause, retires, only to find that his household is in disarray, his grown children money-grubbing, and Vietnamese society far from the rosy picture of equality he'd imagined he'd helped make it.
On a festive spring day in 1940, two young quan họ singers fall in love. But their relationship is soon ruthlessly disrupted by class injustices, imposed upon both—and many other Vietnamese—by the ongoing French colonial rule and the looming Japanese occupation.
