The City of Brotherly Love has just been proclaimed number one in America--for hostility. Prep school English teacher Amanda Pepper is beginning to understand why. A computer science teacher is receiving go-back-to-Africa phone calls; a young Vietnamese boy is killed in a drive-by shooting; outside a Chinatown massage parlor, student April Tuong is kidnapped. Amanda refuses to let gentle April vanish without asking a few questions, starting in her own classroom.