Hepting’s Road – A Novel of Teaching

Classroom comedy, system satire, and lying leaders—potholes along the teaching road.

The Story:

Steve Hepting is a man to be admired. From an impoverished background he achieves financial success as a turn-of-the-millennium stock broker, only to implode financially and romantically in the tech-stock bust of 2001-02. In need of a paycheque, Hepting is unexpectedly selected for a teaching position. He falls victim to comedic classroom stumbles, mentors Frank “Tiny” Little, a slow-witted football star, and fawns over an attractive, coquettish colleague.

True to his system-fighting roots, Hepting tangles with the domineering, data-diva principal, Jennifer Capelli. Her subterfuge results in a mid-year transfer to an elementary school, a position for which Hepting is untrained and unskilled.

Finding that teaching at either the elementary or high school level too much work for too little pay, Hepting accepts an offer to return to the financial industry, only to be manipulated by the unethical leader of the investment firm.

With romance stalled and career aspirations thwarted, Hepting requires a rethink of what is important to him. He becomes energized by student enthusiasm for an international aid project. The surprisingly astute advice he receives from his former student, the academically challenged Tiny Little, helps him finally realize that after travelling along a serpentine, and at times arduous road, teaching is the passion that fuels him.