Many people are familiar to some degree with the yeti, or abominable snowman; it is less well known that other varieties of apemen wander the remote reaches of Asia, and one type, the Almas, is reputed to take a strong interest in human females.
In Dec 1940, in the tiny mountain kingdom of Bhutan, an exotic country unique in having taken the yeti as its totem animal, a baby boy is left at the gate of a monastery.
The resident monks are mystified to find that the baby is covered with fur, and they fear this child may be some sort of avatar, some freak of nature. But, good souls that they are, they take it in.
One day a band of Chinese cavalry suddenly appears out of nowhere and occupies the monastery. Little Jack, having scampered off into the woods, watches in horror as the soldiers shoot the abbot, and march the other monks off into the hills.
What can he do?
That night he takes a horse and heads for the nearest population center, where he hopes to find a boy he met on a previous visit.
But his young friend has gone back to the family home in Maryland.
Now what?
Follow Jack, to Holland. Go with him to Canada, and watch him as he struggles with his identity crisis, as he grows and develops, and becomes a troubled young thinker. Witness his meeting with the woman who abandoned him so long ago in front of that monastery, his real mother.
And listen to him in his later years as he challenges current deep physics, confronts a lecture hall of scientists, and delivers his paper on space and time.