Sean Phillips lives with a caretaker after shooting himself in the head at age 17, causing facial disfigurement. The circumstances of the shooting are initially left ambiguous. Sean's relationship with his parents is strained as they struggle to understand why he chose to shoot himself. The novel alternates between different moments in Sean's life. He describes the reactions people have to his appearance, and the experience he has meeting people before and after the shooting. One of his friends, Kimmy, visits him in the hospital, but she is discouraged by Sean's parents who believe she convinced Sean to shoot himself. While recuperating in the hospital, Sean develops the play-by-mail
role-playing game Trace Italian, from which he earns a small income. The objective of
Trace Italian is to traverse a
post-apocalyptic United States and locate a fortress after which the game is named—a fortress that Sean claims no player will ever penetrate. Sean describes the correspondence he has with players, in particular two teenage players who attempt to carry out the game's actions in real life. One dies and the other is injured, and Sean is sued in court by the players' parents but the case is dismissed. The novel ends with Sean recalling a time before the shooting when he sneaked out with Kimmy and they kissed behind a store. That same night, Sean takes out a rifle and considers whether to shoot himself as well as his parents. He decides not to shoot his parents, then enters his room, rests the rifle against under his chin and lies on his stomach. The sentence ends with an excerpt from a fantasy. The narrative is told in a non-chronological order, with the current life of the narrator interrupted with frequent flashbacks, in a reverse chronological order. ==References==