For three teenage boys spending a lonely summer on the beach in NewEngland, it was the summer they learned about life, the summer they became men, the Summer of '42. World War II. Fifteen-year-old, sensitive Hermie (Gary Grimes) and his friends Oscy (Jerry Houser) and Benjie (Oliver Conant), the "terrible trio," spend the long summer days dreaming of and ogling girls. But Hermie has his eye on an older woman,22-year-old, married Dorothy (Jennifer O'Neill). Dorothy's husband is overseas in the military, and, lonely, she strikes up a friendship with Hermie. It's entirely innocent; Dorothy does not think of Hermie in asexual way...until the day she receives a telegram that her husband has been killed, and in her grief, Dorothy turns to Hermie in this tender coming-of-age story.