Lawyer David Halper flies home from meetings in Los Angeles too late for his son's sixteenth birthday. He finds Simon dead in his gift, a new Jeep. Shattered by Simon's suicide, determined to save other kids from inadequate parents and schools, Halper becomes an English teacher at Midhill High. His first writing assignment pleads, Tell Me Who You Are. He is shocked to find some kids can't write, period. But others write remarkable accounts of turbulent lives stunningly unlike the sentimental model of teenhood which high schools are programmed to match.