Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds & hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade Twenty miles away in Yonkers seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school & pins his hopes on what seems like a promising sporting career
- if he can untangle himself from his family drama The link between this unlikely pair is Kel's mother Charlene a former student of Arthur's After nearly two decades of silence it is Charlene's unexpected phone call to Arthur
- a plea for help
- that jostles them into action