A troubled teenage girl finds herself in a web of lies and deceit when her stepmother attempts to murder her by sending her to a discipline camp.

Young adults at a first-time offenders' boot camp discover the legend of the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan is real, but is much more horrifying than they could have imagined.

Marine officer Alexandra is tough enough to kick any guy's ass in a bar fight, but there's one opponent she can't beat: military policy. When she returns to her conservative hometown from Iraq with a mysterious personal life, she finds herself charged with preparing a tempestuous teenage girl to boot camp.

Perfectly respectable youngster Ben refuses to stand by when his girl-friend, provocatively impish drug addict Sophie, is shipped off by her airhead ma and brutally domineering stepfather to dodgy Dr. Norman Hail's completely isolated Fiji 'boot camp'. Ben fakes drug problems to get enrolled in the 'serenity' rehabilitation program from wayward teenagers according to their often irresponsible parents. Under ex-military guards captain Logan's ruthless sway, Ben saves an exhausted boy's life before attempting an escape with Sophie.

Anthony "Swoff" Swofford, a Camus-reading kid from Sacramento, enlists in the Marines in the late 1980s. He malingers during boot camp, but makes it through as a sniper, paired with the usually-reliable Troy. The Gulf War breaks out, and his unit goes to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. After 175 days of boredom, adrenaline, heat, worry about his girlfriend finding someone else, losing it and nearly killing a mate, demotion, latrine cleaning, faulty gas masks, and desert football, Desert Storm begins. In less than five days, it's over, but not before Swoff sees burned bodies, flaming oil derricks, an oil-drenched horse, and maybe a chance at killing. Where does all the testosterone go?