Ben's Story

When 13-year-old Ben Caplan comes apart at school once again, he is given a choice—expulsion, military school, or what's behind door number three. Who would have guessed—a rolling rubber room, in the cab of a 70-semi truck, at 70 mph? To top it off, he's thrown in with the two guys he loves the most—who happen to be the guys who have brought him to the brink. Then Voilà, a Hail Mary intervention never tried in a school counselor's grab bag of desperate measures. The trip to Las Vegas with Dad during spring break, had already been planned, but now, with the command appearance of union kingpin Gramps, the Committee for a Better Ben has been expanded. With a whole lot of time and road, the boys have a week to get it figured out or it's bye-bye Ben. With only one safety valve, a phone-a-friend number to his favorite teacher, the future looks like a seven ten split. These are the guys in need of a head adjustment, but who gets sent to Group Therapy, with Mr. Shryke, AKA, the Shrikazoid, and a bunch of the school's real losers? Incredible as it might seem, truckin' therapy begins to have an effect. Storytelling, the Caplan birthright, begins its connective magic almost immediately. Inspired by an oral history assignment, serendipitously assigned immediately before the truckin' therapy has been mandated, the Caplan's begin to understand how the timing couldn't have been better. As the miles blow by, the Caplan archives roll out story after story, gold for Ben's project. Sadly, while the mother lode remains deeply buried, nobody is ready to do the heavy lifting. In lieu of the stories that need to be told, new ones keep popping up—at a medieval themed casino where Ben pulls Excalibur out of a stone and wins a free dinner. Another, where a frenzied grandma type sporting pink hair and Bermuda shorts, drops dollar chips into a gigantic slot machine faster than she can pull down the lever. And so many more. As much as the new distractions keep their spirits up, the plan takes an unexpected off ramp. Gramps disappears. With the recent end of a bitter strike, Gramps is not such a popular guy back home. The truth police finally show up and Ben's dad is forced to share a secret the Caplan's have kept under wraps for most of his life—the murder of his grandma, and how Ben's dad has always placed the blame for the murder on his own dad, Deke Caplan. Maybe the bad guys came knocking again.