Saul Berenstein is a Jewish man from Baltimore who moved to Michigan a few years ago with a misguided sense of justice. He planned to bring a torch of enlightenment to the future leaders of tomorrow as a high school teacher in a small town. However, he feels himself sinking into the placid, unintellectual ease of his surroundings without gleaning any of the uniquely Midwestern happiness that his neighbors and his wife, Patsy, seem to have. One night, Saul and Patsy get into a car accident. They make their way to a farmhouse to ask for help. Saul realizes it’s the home of Emory and Anne McPhee, two of his former students. They dropped out of school and at eighteen, they are married with a baby. Saul envies their joy, which is unmarred by contemplation or self-consciousness. He asks Emory for a cigarette, and he notices an advertisement on Emory’s matchbook for a book called Secrets of the Universe. He and Patsy stay the night at the McPhee house. The next morning, Patsy tells Saul that she doesn’t need him to be carefree because she loves him anyway. He decides to order _Secrets of the Universe, _hoping that it will lead him to happiness. He goes to the McPhees’ house and watches their bliss from the road. They are startlingly real while Saul feels that he’s just floating through life. When the book arrives, it urges him to stop overthinking things and embrace simplicity. Saul is unable to do this. He feels that he contains a multitude of futures and that having to live his one life is unfulfilling. On another night, he looks in on the McPhees again and sees them arguing. He drives home and almost hits a deer. For a brief moment, his brush with death convinces him that he’s discovered the secret to the universe. He makes love to Patsy and declares that he’s ready to be a father. In the postcoital afterglow, though, he loses that contented feeling.