When Charlie Babbitt goes home to the Midwest for his estranged father's funeral, he learns not only that he's been cut out of his inheritance, but that he has a grown brother...Raymond...who has been sheltered almost all of his life in an East Coast institution for the developmentally disabled. Raymond is an autistic savant...a person who is severely limited in most mental areas but extremely gifted in others. After traveling to the institution, Charlie kidnaps Raymond but then finds that Raymond will only fly Qantas. The two then begin a long cross-country odyssey in their father's 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible...a trip that will lead them to understanding and love, and for Charlie a kind of redemption.