Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twenty-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"—an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds—but at a terrible cost.