John Greeve is the headmaster. The 30 years of his life at The Wells School have been rich, challenging, and full of meaning. But now John Greeve's precisely ordered world is crumbling. The values he so passionately believes in are being threatened by forces he cannot accept. John Greeve is a man at the crossroads fighting for the decency of his school, for the survival of his family—and, finally, stripped of everything, for his very life.