When 9/11 struck, Ben Batchelder was living overseas. Dumbfounded, he wondered: How could he help? After leaving his marriage and cozy corporate career, he returns to the U.S. with an outlandish plan: to protect the country by car, driving a silver-plated VW Beetle as close to the remote borders as possible, without getting arrested. Along the way he gets to know his beloved country again and meets many unheralded borderlanders, whose stories of hard work, perseverance, and patriotic hope go well beyond the usual headlines. Instead, he finds that the nation's edges reveal much about its core - and in the process comes home to an overwhelming sense of gratitude.