[5][4] The novel is set primarily in Topeka, Kansas, in the late 1990s,[6] and is told mainly from the perspective of three characters: Adam Gordon, a high school debate champion, and his parents Jane and Jonathan, who are psychologists at a local institution known as the Foundation.

In a nonlinear narrative, the novel explores Adam's preparation for a national debate championship (which he wins), his relationship with his girlfriend Amber, and his parents' lives.

"[4] Garth Risk Hallberg in The New York Times Book Review acclaimed the novel as "a high-water mark in recent American fiction.

[12] Lerner describes The Topeka School as about, among other things, "a violent identity crisis among white men" in the 1990s that prefigured the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

[2] One of the primary conflicts of the novel is between the prevailing political centrism and "end of history" rhetoric of the time, accepted largely unthinkingly by Adam and his cosmopolitan parents, and an undercurrent of right-wing anger voiced in its most extreme form by the protests of the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church.