Holt uses several traditional elements of storytelling to create an intimacy between the characters and the reader and, ultimately, to reveal her underlying theme.

The use of first-person narrative and the present tense immediately involve the reader with events taking place in When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. As the other characters are introduced, the reader gains a real sense of the frustration that Toby feels with the narrowness of life in Antler. As these characters are developed more fully around the one single plot event that occurs in Antler, this frustration is followed by the acknowledgment that life and people are not necessarily as they first appear.

Zachary's arrival in town serves as the pivotal plotting devise and reveals much about each of Holt's characters that Toby has not realized. He begins to see the possibilities of how the very qualities of sameness he finds...