Beginning as an account of bereavement told by a 19-year old war widow, The Hummingbird War soars into a tale of the ultimate price paid by soldiers, their families, and the deeply-divided nation during the Vietnam War. Amid the tumultuous year of 1968, Diane Hayes tells the story of how she risked everything to end the war - the war overseas, the war at home, and the war within her heart. After her Navy pilot husband's jet is shot down, shy and deferential Diane moves from her island home to attend college. When she takes a job for the university's SDS chapter, she discovers more than political unrest in her heart and she is forced to choose between a past she does not want to abandon and an uncertain future.