True North

Four teenagers find their way through the challenges of adolescence and discover they are actually genetic siblings separated as embryos before they were even born. A tragic illness draws their families together, forcing one father to face a secret he had kept hidden for years. Spanning one academic school year, teenagers and their parents navigate depression, substance abuse, homophobia, sexual orientation, chronic illness, and suicide in search of their individual true north. The difference between true north and magnetic north is just a matter of degrees. Follow these four teenagers and their parents and find a little of yourself and your parents in each of them. One pair of siblings, Michelle and Stephen, eighteen and seventeen, live in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and their father has a spinal cord injury. Their births are the result of in vitro fertilization, where eggs are harvested and fertilized outside the womb. The other pair, a set of twins named Caroline and Brian, fourteen, are born as a result of an embryo transfer by a lesbian couple. Caroline develops pediatric leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant, thereby compelling her mothers to search for the family whose embryos they had adopted sixteen years earlier. These teenagers are old souls who have lived before and will live again. The mission of Rotary International is to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through its fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders. Rotary's motto is Service Above Self.