a teacher with a past, a teenager with a project, a complicated collaboration, a dangerous distraction ... Mathematics teacher Bradley Williams is an easily distracted lover of puzzles who is about to fall off the map. A clouded and complicated past has propelled him into exile in Western Massachusetts. There he teaches classes under contract at nearby colleges, and the highlight of his monkish life in small-town purgatory is the weekly gathering of local intellectuals who shred semantics and philosophy over coffee and pastries. His shifting attention will be drawn to an online appeal for help from a young mathematical genius who is working on a new approach to an old problem. And life will become dangerous. The Four-Color Puzzle is a story of the pull of mystery and the power of relationship to reach across distance and time, to defy borders and drawn boundaries. It is about the magical meeting of young minds and old ideas, of the interplay of teaching and learning that transforms both student and teacher in unexpected ways.