Albert Einstein's brain floats in formaldehyde in a Tupperware RM bowl in a gray duffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark. Driving the car is Michael Paterniti, a young journalist from Maine. Sitting next to him is Thomas Harvey, an eighty-four-year-old pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955 -- and simply removed the brain and took it home. On a cold February day, the two men and the brain left New Jersey and set out for sunny California, where Einstein's perplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. Riding along with them, as the imaginary fourth passenger, is the id-driven genius himself . . .