From the inside front flap:

I J Esker spends her days teaching math at a private school in Brooklyn; most nights she curls up under an afghan in her tiny apartment and reads. At thirty-one, after early loss and disappointment, Esker has found a quiet resolve in her self-imposed solitude. But when Ann James, her favorite student, mysteriously falls from the bleachers during Winter Concert rehearsals and has to stay home in casts during the weeks before Christmas, Esker begins home-tutoring the precocious teenager, and soon, much to her chagrin, finds herself falling edgily, haltingly in love with the girl's father, Wally.

...Charged with Esker's own irreverance and wit, Heart, You Bully, You Punk sweeps us irresistibly into her profound and wistful struggle to unite the rest of her self with her unruly heart.