Michael McCaffrey continues to wrestle with his own alienation and detachment from the teaching profession, direction of his life and personal relationships.
He is compelled to deal with unexpected loss and abandonment on multiple levels. Throughout his ordeals, he maintains his sense of humor and perspective. His setbacks, distractions and inertia make forward progress challenging. He observes the similar difficulty and indecisiveness experienced by two of his former university classmates.
His intentioned departure from teaching following his ninth year does not materialize. His ambition towards cultivating a stable relationship evaporates for reasons initially uncertain to him. He has difficulty coming to terms with his fragmented life that only periodically offers glimpses of clarity.
An encounter with a former high school girlfriend prompts him to consider what might have happened had he never left his hometown. Another classmate, a self-professed business success, lectures one of classes and illustrates the contrast between McCaffrey's present stagnation and a vocational path he abandoned early in his career.
As his narrative enters into his thirteenth year of teaching, his observations and caustic opinions become more pronounced and unwelcome. He's aware of the estrangement with his current faculty peers. As his closet confidants leave, he realizes St. Elizabeth-St. Ignacious High School has changed irrevocably. He is not an integral part of the shift and has become professionally expendable.
McCaffrey continues his satirical exchanges and pranks with faculty foils and adds additional victims. McCaffrey documents his lively and playful interactions with his students.
McCaffrey's forebodings regarding his Principal's motives reach fruition during contract negotiations following his thirteenth teaching year. Will McCaffrey survive a decisive effort to get rid of him? If he is destined to leave, who will ultimately determine the terms of his departure?