"In Springfield, Ohio, there lived a young man who had a very philosophic nature. He had been sent to the finest of colleges by the stepfather, who was a kindly man with great zest for living. The old gentleman had taken the boy in as an infant when his business partner and his wife had been killed in an automobile accident, and raised him as if he were his natural born son. At his baptism, the babe was given the Christian name of John, but because of the philosophic mind the boy had developed, all his friends had come to call him Candidy..." And so begins the journey of Candidy, a journey of many twists and turns, a journey as much internal as external, a journey confronting the very nature of the universe and God.