Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” She began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening. At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, HOMESCHOOLED is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing and the wages of a mother’s insatiable love.

A shy boy named Oliver Loving attends his school’s annual dance, hoping for a glimpse of the object of his unrequited affections, Rebekkah Sterling. But as the music plays, a troubled young man sneaks in through the school’s back door. The dire choices this man makes that evening will tear the town of Bliss, Texas apart. Nearly 10 years later, Oliver still lies wordless and paralyzed at an assisted care facility. Orbiting the stillpoint of his hospital bed is a family transformed. And then there is Rebekkah, who left Texas long ago and still refuses to speak about her own part in that tragic night. When a new medical test promises a key to unlock Oliver’s trapped mind, the town’s unanswered questions resurface with new urgency.