What are the motifs in Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera Cleaver and Bill Cleaver?

Hope and Dispair is a reoccuring idea in the story. During the long hard winter Romey says that God has forgotten them and that they are forgotten people. The winter is difficult, and it is easy to forget that spring will come. It seems as though the entire world is frozen and hard. One important lesson that Mary Call learns in the novel is that hope is an adult emotion.