The Tale

Jennifer Fox faces a host of life-altering questions after a short story from her middle school days forces her to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. An accomplished documentarian working in New York, Jennifer is completing her latest project, about the lives of women around the world. She receives a series of phone calls from her mother, Nettie, who has found a short story Jennifer wrote at the age of 13 for school. In it, she describes various encounters with her riding instructor Mrs. G and her running coach Bill while away at summer camp. Nettie is unnerved by the implications of her daughter's writing, but Jennifer is nonplussed. She has always looked back with fondness on the time she spent with the two charismatic adults. Egged on by Nettie and encouraged by her supportive fiancé, Jennifer yearns to know more and sets out on a journey to find the real people 30 years later - the children, now adults, who also attended the camp back then-and eventually the coaches themselves. But the more she learns, the more her memories shift and the more questions she unearths. As her frustration mounts, she finds herself turning inward to get to the truth, imagining conversations with her 13-year-old-self and even Mrs. G and Bill in an effort to understand how and why events occurred so long ago.