Although Paul and his two brothers enjoy the newfound liberty of their desert town, their mother constantly worries for their academic future in a town that the U.S. census has declared “the least educated district in America.”[1] Unwilling to let anything halt their learning, she acquires college reading lists and instills in her sons a love for literature. The summer before heading to Stanford University for school, Paul reads Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., by Jeremy Leven. The book's idea that the mind is the result of the brain doing its work awakes a curiosity in Paul for neuroscience.