Smythe's Theory of Everything

In 2004, the author found a little diary of 386 pages written by a 62-year-old man in a nursing home. That diary inspires this story. Jack Smythe thinks Einstein is wrong and he has a theory to prove it. But he's no physicist. Instead, he's been a homeless kid, a palm reader, a cosmic theorist, a father of two (who probably aren't his) and a devoted companion to his sister Kitty who has her own demons. Now at 62, he wakes after an operation to find he's been placed at Eden, a below-average nursing home. Nurse Stinson, Collier the Hun, Pistol Pete, Skeleton Joe, Dooley the publican, Jim the ex-politician and Jim's rebel granddaughter, among others, confronts him. He wants nothing to do with any of them. Instead, with wry wit Jack begins a story about Kitty starting with the day they ran away from home for good. It seems Jack is always running away and ultimately there's a daring escape at Eden. But unknown to Jack, it's the "muddle of geriatrics" at Eden that eventually put meaning in his life.