Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of domestic abuse, racism, and institutionalized racist violence. Additionally, the source material uses outdated, offensive terms for mental health conditions, replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

The protagonist of the 2020s timeline of Slocumb’s novel goes by “Bern,” a shortened form of his middle name. He grew up as “a poor kid from Milwaukee who used to eat bologna three times a week because his family couldn’t afford anything else” (14). However, Bern’s life changes dramatically when the Delaney Foundation gives him his first French horn through their “Dream a Song” (40) program (40), and he becomes a “DF Kid” who feels a sense of obligation to the Foundation. Getting an instrument leads Bern to study music at Columbia and work at the University of Virginia. He believes that the Foundation made his career in music possible, and he feels like he “could never fully repay that debt” to the Foundation (55).

At the beginning of the novel, Bern is a “Delaney dork” (256), or a big fan of the composer. He “tried to find similarities between Delaney and himself” when he was a graduate student working with Jacques Simon on Delaney’s music (236).