On top of battling the normal teenage angst that everyone goes through, Joanie is also reeling from her parents' bitter divorce and having to cope with her mother's new boyfriend and father's new family. Alone in a new town and without friends, she turns to passing the time by indulging in her longtime hobby of making toy models of soldiers and is both amazed and shocked when one of them comes to life.

Despite her millions of unanswered questions and having to make sense of new mysteries every day, Joanie comes to find a loyal and trustworthy companion in Adler, a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht and a member of the German Resistance during World War II who must also find a way to handle living in modern times on top of being invisible to most of the population. The two of them will have to fight several battles on many fronts in both the physical world and unseen realms as they both try to comprehend Adler's new existence and piece Joanie's broken life back together.