When smart, quiet suburban student Leland Fitzgerald commits a shocking crime, he becomes the center of a maelstrom of people trying to understand what he did and why, from his famous but absent father, to his troubled ex-girlfriend to the victims devastated family. The only person Leland trusts is Pearl, a jaded juvenile hall teacher and aspiring writer who helps Leland to examine the truth of his crime. Yet, Pearl too, has his own exploitative agenda, using Leland to garner material for a book and further his own career--until he begins to see that Leland is giving him something he never expected; not the concrete answer he seeks, or the literary fame he hopes for, but the realization that now is the time to change his own life for the better.