What if everyone in the world did a good deed for three people -- and what if each of them "paid it forward" by doing a good deed for three more people, and so on, until the world was a different place? Pay It Forward begins when social studies teacher Reuben St. Clair gives his class an extra credit assignment: implement a plan that will change the world. Trevor, a boy with an active imagination and a loving, though dysfunctional, cocktail-waitress mother, rises to the challenge.

His plan is this: he'll do something good for three people and tell each that instead of paying him back, they should pay it forward and do a favor for three more people.

Trevor's initial attempt seems to fail, to his disappointment. But eventually, wondrously, the seeds that Trevor has planted bear fruit in ways that are marvelous to behold and that surprise even Trevor.

From the author of Funerals for Horses, which the San Francisco Chronicle called "an enchanting, moving novel of mourning, celebration, and salvation", Pay It Forward rewards readers with an intelligent, straightforward modern morality tale. Demonstrating the same universal appeal as Forrest Gump, Hyde's story of the triumph of the human spirit is a down-to-earth look at the virtue of innocence and of faith.