Jake Yoder, a precocious boy caught between Amish culture and the modern world, sits in a sixth-grade classroom writing stories at the behest of a stern yet charismatic teacher. Jake's stories feature children who are crushed, imprisoned and distorted, yet somehow flailing around with a kind of bedazzled awe, trying to find a way out. The strange logic and disturbing shifts in Jake's tales reveal a young boy processing intense emotional experiences in the wake of his mother's suicide and his own proximity to a 2006 schoolroom shooting.