The novel includes an appendix by Daniel Biss, a close friend of Green, that explains some of the more complex equations used by the main character, Colin Singleton.

After graduating from high school, and before college, Colin's best and only friend, Hassan Harbish, convinces him to go on a road trip to take his mind off the breakup.

After reaching a rural Tennessee town called Gutshot, they visit the supposed resting place of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

There, they meet Lindsey Lee Wells and her mother Hollis, whose family runs a local textile mill.

Hollis allows Colin and Hassan to stay with her family and offers them a summer job interviewing the town's residents and assembling an oral history of Gutshot.

While the back stories of Colin's life play out, Hassan finds a girlfriend, Katrina, a friend of Lindsey's.

In a blog post, Green wrote that the novel "needed to be written in third person, because it's about a guy whose brain does not lend itself to narratives, and who struggles to tell stories in ways other people find interesting.

With the footnotes and the appendix that is at the end of the novel, Green gives his readers "a way of attempting to achieve precision and clarity" of the story in general, but more specifically, Colin's mind.

[6] John Green mentioned in Brotherhood 2.0, a video blog he created with his brother, on 10 December 2007, that rights had been bought to make his book into a movie.