Hill’s principal characters are haunted. They are trapped by the past, evidence of how life does not follow our best-laid plans and that as we grow older our life becomes an accumulation of regrets. If regrets here are inevitable, they are also counterproductive. As Samuel perceives his own life, its narrative should have followed the enthralling logic of his favorite childhood reading: a series of adventure books in which the reader selects a course of action for the main character, step by step. That decision and its consequences then compel the storyline and always end happily. Now in his thirties, Samuel wants his life to be like that—a series of step-by-step events following a selected path and leading inevitably to a happy ending.

Of course, Samuel learns a different conception of life as he digs into his mother’s past and learns of her complex motivations for leaving her family. As an adult, his emotional and psychological development is stunted by his inability to understand his life and to deal with his accumulation of regrets. Festering in regret, Samuel struggles to find any sort of rewarding, even functional, present. He clings to his regrets over his mother’s abandonment, the estrangement from his father, his awkward friendship with Bishop, and his obsession with Bethany.