The Contortionist's Handbook is the story of John Dolan Vincent, an abnromally gifted child with a prclivity for mathematics beyond his years. However, he also bears a rare deformity?polydactylism?and his genius is counterbalanced by a near absence of social skills and episodes of severe migraines. As an adult his migraines occur with alarming regularity, and his repeated attempts at self-medication send him over and over to the emergency room. He knows that to visit twice is to risk being institutionalized as a suicide risk. So, following each trip to the hospital, he draws upon his skill as a petty forger, and reinvents a new identity for himself. The Contortionist's Handbook is about the lengths people will go to in order to protect themselves from others and ultimately from themselves.