Wesley Scott is a teenage boy with autism. He lives within his own intimate realm of sensory overload, dysfunction, sometimes violence, and fear of the outside world. He describes himself as the only actor on a stage without a script. We learn through Wes' own words that he is a deep, thoughtful young man, but no one knows it. Wes is unable to connect with anyone other than his father, a captain in the Marine Corps. He in turn adores his extraordinary son. When his dad ships off to fight in the Middle East, Wes is confused and senses foreboding, although he cannot express it to his family or friends. With his father overseas, Wes finds himself further isolated in a world of "Ords" (his dad's term for the ordinaries, unlike his "Ex" son) and a stranger in his family. His mother is distant and cold, his high school brother resents the attention Wes constantly steals from him, and his twenty-something sister has chosen to move away. The burden on the family gets worse when Captain Scott returns home wounded. When his father succumbs to PTSD, Wes must somehow make sense of all that has happened-which is difficult for any teenager, let alone one on the autism spectrum who's lost the only family member who ever bothered to know him. The Scotts seem on the verge of unraveling. How will Wes come to understand this tragedy? And, how will the family ever come to fill the void left by a father who understood what the rest have yet to discover... that Wes is an extraordinary young man.
