Finding Jolie

Jolie Feinstein is a 16 year-old girl from a "good" family in an affluent New Jersey suburb. She's popular, smart, attractive, and not unhappy, but the awareness of her mortality haunts her. Jolie seeks refuge in drugs and sex for a while, but a series of events and a revelation about an early childhood accident resulting in the death of her little sister, pushes her to her breaking point. She runs away - but not before making a late-night call to her high-school math teacher, Mr. Keltz. Daniel Keltz is a 32 year-old algebra teacher who, after Jolie's call, begins to question his own solitary and severely unsatisfying life. When he learns of Jolie's whereabouts, Daniel does the only crazy thing he's ever done in his life, and takes off to find her. The story follows Jolie to Colorado Springs and then to San Francisco, where she finds temporary solaces and unlikely friendships interspersed with more trouble, obsession, and death; and it follows Daniel's journey to find Jolie and himself along the way.