"THEIR SOLITARY WAY tells the story of Joseph Zorn, a boy raised in the forests of Michigan, whose rigorous homeschooling and social isolation produce a crippling alienation in him and his siblings. At a young age, his father's philosophy lessons cause an internal crisis in the young boy as he wonders about the way language interferes with his experience of external reality. Despite his desperate attempts to make direct contact with the world outside his head, he always seems to be defeated, and so remains confined in his abstract mental world. When his older siblings eventually reach the age of college, the consequences of their upbringing are revealed. One of them elopes, another commits suicide, and a third turns to alcohol. When Joseph himself goes to college to study physics, he proves completely unable to make friendships or to establish any human connections whatsoever. He begins to wonder why his father raised him in such a way as to create this painful situation. His father's illness bring the three surviving children home, where they angrily confront the old man, and finally discover the truth of his motives. Their Solitary Way is an abstract and introspective work that confronts a series of philosophical paradoxes."-- adapted from back cover.
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