Nineteen-year-old Lea Kostovic, a cynical and emotionally fragile former university student, has been abandoned by her family at the outset of a Balkan civil war during the late 1990s. Major Ed Russell is a gruff yet idealistic divorced American army officer stationed in the former Yugoslavia on a peacekeeping mission. While manning a border checkpoint, Russell learns that Lea intends to head south to find her family and must convey to the young woman that the borders will not reopen until spring. Lea realizes that as a person of Croatian descent, neither the Serbs nor the Muslims will take her in. The thought of roaming the countryside for months-freezing, starving, and alone-prods a wary Lea to accept Russell's offer not only to work for him as an interpreter, but also to stay with him. There's just one condition to their simple bargain-Lea must trade sex for protection and survival.
A complex relationship ensues and as Russell and fledgling artist Lea begin a new life in America, they attempt to build a marriage from a barter that originally had nothing to do with love and respect.