The novel takes place in New York, where a young boy, Oskar, is diagnosed with Aspergers and finds a key in his father's blue vase, who was abruptly killed in 9/11.  Oskar never truly understood why this happened to his father and sets forth on a journey through the five boroughs of New York to try and see if he can uncover any missing clues.  Oskar thought his father has left him this clue as a means to send him on a journey, hence the fact they used to send on another on various journeys when his father was still alive.  Throughout the journey, Oskar is trying to find the lock the key opens in all of New York, he even calculates all of the possibilities.  On the envelope where the key was located, the name "Black" was written on the outside, and Oskar assumes it must belong to someone with the name/last name "Black."  Throughout his journey, Oskar visits every person in all of New York with the last name "Black" and begins to turn unhopeful when no one has any idea what he is talking about.  He becomes friends with his neighbor, Mr. Black, who accompanies him on his journey to finding his father.  Oskar feels as though he is straying away from his Mother, but believes uncovering the truth about his father is more important.  Throughout the journey of self-identity, Oskar has to tackle various challenges to continue his mission, including climbing up to high areas and talking to strangers, but he decides it is worth it as long as it brought him closer to his dead father.  At the end of the novel, it is uncovered the key does in fact not belong to Oskar's father and was simply left in the vase by accident from when his father bought it at a garage sale a while back.  However, Oskar was granted a new optimistic self-identity throughout the journey and felt as though he began to cope with the death of his father, feeling as though the journey ultimately brought him closer to his father and mother.  Jonathan Foer's ability to write through the mind of someone with this paticular disease is wonderful and truly captures the intelligence and different ways the minds thinks when people have this disease.  The use of various allusions to other pieces, as well as the Bible, portrays Oskar as a Christ figure in this situation as he travels up to the stairs of the Empire State Building and is ascending towards Heaven and ultimately rekindling the relationship and time loss with his father. A truly heart warming story for those coping with death.  Every color, object, verb, and detail come together to express the deeper meaning behind the novel, that coping with the inevitable may be rough, but everyone gets through it as they pave their own path through self-discovery along the way.