What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me

In a cruel genetic twist, thirteen-year-old Lee, afflicted with Progeria (a premature aging disease) speeds through the aging process and approaches death. Fascinated by the life of Ben Franklin, his final wish is to visit the Franklin Institute and White House in Philadelphia and Washington DC. Due to a family mix-up that keeps his single mother in Newark, Lee’s new caretaker Tomas—a survivor of Argentina’s Dirty War—agrees to take Lee instead. Lee, fighting the acceleration of time, and Tomas, fighting a past filled with memories of imprisonment and torture, help each other pursue a final quest—for Lee it is the ghost of Ben Franklin, for Tomas his missing family, “disappeared” in the war and possibly living in Philadelphia. One heading inevitably towards death, the other fleeing it, Lee and Tomas share their unsettling truths with each other.