Malcolm McGowan is an unemployed former student who has become so bored with life that he conjures up a scheme, simplistic at that, to purloin a Van Gogh masterpiece From the Institute of Art in Minneapolis just after 9-11. His dreaded enemy, Cecil, has just moved in with the woman of his dreams, so to impress 'Lucina' one afternoon he crashes through the third story window and onto a tree below with the painting and totes it back to his apartment several blocks away. Soon thereafter, a tiny figure appears from underneath an olive tree on the painting and coalesces into the ghostly figure of Vincent Van Gogh. He demands McGowan go back outside and scour the landscape for a tiny paint chip he scraped off the painting during the robbery. Much of the book ponders the psychological ramifications of committing a crime of this magnitude, while McGowan scrambles about trying to figure out a way to undo the legal mess he's gotten himself into. One of the characters, in Edgar Allan Poe fashion, is an umbrella bird that ultimately serves to redeem him from the crime.