Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS, and his friend Erik build a raft and set sail down the Mississippi River, determined to find a New Orleans doctor they believe has a cure. Their journey gives Dexter a chance to experience life as it should be lived and will change both boys' lives forever.

A film drama that tells the dramatic, poignant and often-exasperating story of the early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early '80s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.