Hamill's most basic paradigm is the intertwining of a journalistic realism, the mean streets of Brooklyn and its denizens, and the magical and mystical realms of Prague and the Kabbalah. The image of snow unites the two worlds—the snowy street where the old wino is found frozen between two cars, and the miraculous "snow in August" created for the showdown in the poolroom. With its ability both to cleanse and destroy, the miraculous snow becomes a metaphor for transformation and a time in which potential is hidden, waiting. The novel begins in a three-day blizzard, through which Michael trudges to serve early morning Mass: "He could remember six of his eleven winters on the earth, and there had never been snow like this. This was snow out of the movies about the Yukon that he watched in the Venus.

This was like the great Arctic blizzards...