Billy Casper (Andrew Garfield) struggles academically and is bullied by his former friend MacDowall at school and by his older brother Judd at home. When Billy was six years old, his father vanished, and his mother frequently leaves him alone when she is gone. Judd works at the nearby coal mine and Billy is supposed to follow in his footsteps when he graduates from high school, but he is determined not to.

When Billy finds a kestrel chick and learns how to raise and train it on his own with the help of a library book, he finds a true passion that allows him to escape the uninteresting reality of the rest of his life and realizes that he is not as useless as his teachers and family keep telling him he is.

After Barry Hines’ novel A Kestrel For A Knave