Upward Bound is a dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles’s disabled community. For many of its clients and staff, it’s a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister, Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend; Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center’s pool; and Dave, Upward Bound’s director, who is staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center’s irrepressible clients. Framing these intertwined narratives --- and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways --- is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.
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