The year is 1962, and Bull Meecham is at the Cordova Hotel in Barcelona, drinking with his friends at the farewell party they have thrown him. They have been drinking for most of the day and have now reached the point of obnoxiousness. Other hotel guests are starting to complain. Pedro, the hotel manager, asks the group to retire to their rooms and because of this, Bull and his fellow pilots play pranks on him, the guests who complained and some additional naval troops who also expressed unhappiness with the noise level in Meecham's group. These pranks are extravagant and include faking a death, and pretending to throw up in front of the hotel guests using mushroom soup as a vomit-worthy prop. They also thrown glass bottles into the fireplace. When Bull is summoned to the office of his superior, Colonel Luther Windham, he is fully expecting to be written up for the shenanigans of the previous night, but instead finds himself the recipient of a respectful formal farewell.
Bull has not been home, or seen his family, which consists of his wife and his three children for over a year. They will all be leaving their home in Atlanta, Georgia, and are nervously excited about what their new home town of Beaufort, South Carolina, will be like. They also dread Bull's return because it changes the dynamic in the home. Ben, the oldest of the Meecham children, is frightened of his autocratic father and also notices changes in his mother even before her husband gets home; she becomes tougher, less sensitive to the kids, and more anxious.
Bull takes control of Squadron 367 in South Carolina and brings his military style home with him. Consequently Ben believes that it is never going to be possible to please his father. He is counting the days until he can graduate high school and leave home. Despite occasionally showing that he loves his kids deep down by defending them to outsiders, Ben feels that his father is a bully. He feels alone in fighting him because his mother adores her husband and allows him to govern the way in which the family is run. Ben feels as though he is in the military too; beds have to be made and rooms readied for inspection every morning and orders have to be jumped to as soon as they are issued. Ben also has to oversee his brother and sister by virtue of the fact that he is the oldest child and he feels resentful of this responsibility even though he loves his siblings and feels protective on them. All too often he feels like he is protecting them from their father.
Bull's orders also extend to Ben's personal life. He informs him one day that he will be going on a date and taking Ansley Matthews, the daughter of one of his associates, out for dinner. Ansley's father wants his daughter to date someone who is not a football jock. Ben doesn't want to take Ansley out any more than she wants to go but despite his efforts to get out of it, Bull is insistent. Ansley tells Ben that her actual boyfriend whom her father doesn't like has threatened to beat up whomever she dates. Ansley and Ben have in common the fact that both feel trapped by their autocratic fathers. Predictably, Ben gets into a fight with Ansley's boyfriend who makes good on his threat to beat up all comers.
Ben continues to become his own man, different from his father and also rather different from the other kids in his high school's popular set. He does not seem to care who the cool kids are, and instead reaches out to a Jewish student and a black farmer for friendship despite playing on the varsity basketball team with the "jocks". He also forges a strong bond with his English teacher, who is unorthodox to say the least.
As he grows up, Ben does not feel that his relationship with his father changes very much, but Bull claims to be proud of him and tells everyone else that his son is the greatest son in the world despite never giving this impression to Ben. At the end of the novel, Bull is flying a routine flight schedule and gets into difficulties. The engine of his plane explodes, and he is killed immediately. The Meechams move back to Atlanta because Ben's mother grew up there and it is also where her parents still live. Mourning, Ben realizes that although he was scared of his father, he yearned to please him and feel that he was loved. He believes now that he never hated his father, but loved him, and just did not understand the intensity and complex nature of his love.
