Seventeen-year-old Tom Robinson Lee, John Kerr, a new senior at a boys' prep school, finds himself at odds with the machismo culture that dominates the campus. The boys worship their coach, Leif Erickson Bill Reynolds, and fill their days with sports, roughhousing, and fantasies about girls, while Tom leans toward classical music, reads Candida, goes to the theater, and generally seems more at ease in the company of women.
The other students taunt him for his unmanly traits, nicknaming him "sister boy," and his father, Herb Lee, Edward Andrews, pushes him to conform to the expected masculine script. Only Al, Darryl Hickman, Tom's roommate, treats him with decency, recognizing that difference does not equal weakness.
Laura Reynolds, Deborah Kerr, wife of the coach, watches the strain from the margins and tries to reach out to Tom, inviting him to tea and slowly drawing them toward each other. She is drawn to him in part because he reminds her of her late husband, John, who died in World War II.
The tension comes to a head when Tom is pressured into visiting Ellie, Norma Crane, a local prostitute, in an attempt to dispel suspicions about his sexuality. The encounter is humiliating and cruel; Ellie mocks him and he reacts with desperation, attempting to end his life in her kitchen.
Herb Lee arrives from the city to discuss the possibility of expelling Tom, and in a startling moment, boasts about his son’s supposed sexual triumph. The Reynoldses reveal the truth: Tom is not the unmanly figure they imagine, and the fight to keep him at the school becomes deeply personal.
Laura goes searching for Tom near the golf course’s sixth tee and finds him in a place of quiet reflection. She offers comfort and, after a moment of hesitation, they kiss, and she warns him gently, years from now, when you talk about this, be kind.
> Years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.
Ten years pass. The adult Tom, now a successful married writer, returns to the school and visits his old coach to ask after Laura. Bill Reynolds explains that Laura is out west somewhere, and he hands Tom a letter from Laura that she left with him. Opening it, Tom learns that Laura read his novel, drew strength from their shared memories, and left Bill because she had no other choice. In the note, she reveals how deeply she cared for Tom, and, as Tom wrote in his book, the line hovers over his memory:
> the wife always kept her affection for the boy.
