After a lonely childhood in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, it is not until Milo Andret goes to U.C. Berkeley as a graduate student that his professors realise what a prodigiously gifted and unusual mind he has. Yet with these gifts come risks, and California in the seventies is rife with temptation, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman and the rival he meets there will haunt him forever. It soon becomes clear that Milo's brilliance is inextricably linked to a dark side, and it is this duality that ultimately threatens to unravel his work, his family, and his life. It is a duality that his son, Hans, inherits and one which he must conquer if he is to avoid the fate of his father. A Doubter's Almanac is at once a captivatingly virtuoso illustration of the powers of the mind and a deeply moving exploration of the nature of love, ambition and genius. It is a novel of flawed characters and frustrated dreams; of the bonds that tie and the passions that destroy.