Echoes of Atlantis:

The Soul Origins of Young Albert Einstein

When I first began imagining young Albert Einstein, I didn’t want to write about the genius everyone already knows. I wanted to find the boy behind the theories—the curious, awkward dreamer trying to make sense of a world that often didn’t make sense to him.

Few people talk about Einstein’s early struggles. As a teenager, his parents left him with his aunt while they pursued work elsewhere. He was bullied in school, not only by classmates but even by some of his teachers who found his questions annoying. This was the horse-and-buggy era, when the latest invention was the light bulb. So how did a boy surrounded by such limited technology go on to change our understanding of the universe?

That question became my creative spark.

I began to imagine that young Albert carried memories older than his lifetime—echoes from another age. What if his soul had once lived on the lost continent of Atlantis, where science and spirituality were one? Perhaps he had been a priest-scientist there, working to harness the same cosmic forces he would later describe in equations. Maybe the ideas that surfaced in his brilliant mind weren’t just inventions—they were recollections.

In writing young Albert, I wasn’t just exploring history—I was exploring the mystery of inspiration itself. Where do great ideas really come from? Are they discovered, invented, or remembered?

That’s the beauty of storytelling: it lets us peek beyond the boundaries of fact and glimpse the soul of possibility.

— Grace A. Blair is a novelist and audiobook narrator who explores the intersection of history, spirituality, and imagination, bringing her characters to life through expressive, emotionally rich narration.