Living a Changed Life

This is the narrative’s primary theme, in that much (if not all) of the novel’s action, or plot, focuses on the actions and choices of protagonist Travis Coates as he struggles to do just what this theme suggests – live a changed life, a life that looks and seems familiar in many ways, a life that he wants to be the same, but a life that in many more ways is actually fundamentally different from the life he knew, and left. There is the sense that Travis’ struggles are grounded in either a fundamental denial of how things have changed in his world or a powerful fear that once he sees the here and now for what it truly is, he (or who he’s become) will have no place in it. It could be argued that there are elements of both...