Point of View

The novel is narrated by an adult Gavin, but the perspective is limited to what Gavin experienced as a ten year old child, with the exception of the last two chapters. These last two chapters cover the period of time after Gavin and his family move away from Alaska until Gavin's adulthood, revealing that the adult Gavin who narrates the novel is narrating from a period after his mother's death. The entirety of the novel is narrated in the first person past tense. The past tense allows Gavin's narration to connect events from his childhood to other events in his adulthood, which gives the reader a fuller picture of Gavin's emotional state and the impacts of his childhood experiences on his life as an adult.

Gavin narrates the story in two ways. The large majority of the novel is written from the perspective of the...