In this "heartwarming tale of brotherly love" (WALL STREET JOURNAL), John Vernon "lifts us high, confronting basic questions about the nature of existence itself and the peculiar objects that sustain this transient life" (Jay Parini). When his reclusive brother Paul died, Vernon came face to face with a life he had never suspected. He found his brother's house in a state of squalid disrepair: piled high with a lifetime of trash, littered with animal corpses and excrement, unheated and decrepit. An assembly worker in the electronics industry and an amateur inventor, Paul had managed to keep his private world hidden from his family and acquaintances. The love between brothers is an unconditional love -- unearned, and realized almost always from a distance. Who really was this man that writer and teacher John Vernon loved? How could a childhood so full of promise turn wrong? Why do we collect things; what use do they have? How do we make and understand our world? In search of answe