Wes Scott, a teenage boy on the autism spectrum, tells us in his own words about his struggles to cope with a chaotic, confusing, and scary worldpdash;while his family tries to handle both living with an autistic child and a Marine father who returns from Iraq debilitated by wounds and suffering PTSD.
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 Westsquo; own words that he is a deep, thoughtful young mannellip;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, his edquo;Ex-man,ydquo; as he fondly calls him. When Captain Scott ships off to fight in the Middle East, Wes is confused and senses foreboding in what it all means, although he cannot express it to his family, friends, or teachers.
With his father overseas, Wes finds himself further isolated in a world of idquo;Ords dquo; (his dadtsquo;s term for the ordinaries, unlike his Ndquo;Exwdquo; son) and a stranger in his own family. His mother is distant and cold, his high school brother resents the inordinate attention his autistic brother constantly steals from him, and his twenty-something sister has chosen to move away from it all to Manhattan. The burden on the family gets exponentially worse when Captain Scott returns home wounded. The family tries to cope as best they can, but when his father succumbs to PTSD, Wes must somehow make sense of all that has happened
