The complex and intense friendship of three 15 year old boys at a New England boarding school in 1973 undergoes many changes when they compete for the approval of a brilliant but manipulative teacher.

SYNOPSIS:

It is 1973 – the year of Watergate and the opening of the Twin Towers – and Daniel Ackerman, Josh Meltzer and Ryan Talbot are sophomores at prestigious Alsop Academy.  Daniel is a superb tennis player, number one on the junior varsity, and Josh is his roommate and doubles partner.  Ryan is the most scholarly and is also gay.  His love of Daniel has a strong sexual aspect, which Ryan has repressed up to this point.

The friends all want to get into the Shakespeare class of Dr Simon Ellman, a legendary teacher whose students gain admission into the best Ivy League schools.  But entry into his class is by Ellman’s invitation only.  Daniel is especially obsessed with gaining this so he can prove to his father that he can excel at something other than tennis.  He encourages Ryan to use his influence with Ellman’s friend, the poetry teacher Mr. Greene, to get them into Ellman’s class.

But Dr Ellman has his own agenda, his own priorities.  He chooses Ryan and Daniel for the class but not Josh, even though Josh is the best writer of the group.  Ellman also chooses Ryan and Daniel to be among the nine boys who he takes on his vaunted trip to Europe, to experience European culture up close.

Josh warns Daniel not to go, but Daniel feels like this is his chance of a lifetime to achieve a kind of immortality.  He wants to change his life forever – something which in fact happens, though not in the ways that Daniel had ever imagined.