The theme of initiation in the face of love and loss is doubly central to Being with Henry, in which Laker loses his mother to another man and then, having found love with Henry, must face the inevitability of Henry's death. Near the book's conclusion, Laker actually articulates that theme when he asks, "Is this what he came to Henry's to learn? That just as soon as you let yourself love someone, you have to lose them?"

Brooks added another dimension to the book's theme; much of Being with Henry has to do with alienation and the frustrations of both old age and of youth as they come together. While sixteen-year-old Laker desperately tries to find his independent place in the adult world, eighty-three-year-old Henry Olsen discovers that his adult independence is slowly being taken from him and that, in some ways, his daughter...