A boy is found by a mysterious shepherd on a heath. The boy is placed with adoptive parents .Anselm's Gift is the 'coming of age' story of this foundling teenager experiencing the strangeness of our ways of life and institutions for the first time.To Martha and Peter, this is the child. they have longed for, but they soon find that they have their hands full. Anselm's remorseless questioning of why the world ts as it is stands as a parody of our times. Finally he finds the answer to his most pressing question: "Whyt am I here"