The book follows Junior, a fourteen-year-old boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation for a school year. The story is intermittent diary style, moving from the start of the school year to the beginning of summer. By introducing Junior's birth defects, including the fact that he was born with hydrocephalus and therefore is small for his age and suffers from seizures, poor eyesight, stuttering, and a lisp.