Vanishing Acts is a novel with multiple settings, each with an important role. The story starts in rural New Hampshire, where Delia and Andrew are comfortable. While things are not quite perfect, the characters are generally happy. Many of the characters’ past stories revolve around snow and winter sports and the rugged mountains surrounding the small town of Wexton. While Wexton is a comfort for Delia, it is a prison for Eric, who only stays there to be close to his fiancée and daughter. However, even Eric is relatively comfortable in this small-town life.

Andrew refers to Arizona as “a state unlike anything in the Northeast. A place where the soil was the color of blood, where snow was a fantasy” (65). In 2005, Phoenix had a population of almost 1.5 million people. Everything in Phoenix seemed designed to make Delia more uncomfortable. She walks off the plane into a wall of heat and a completely foreign landscape. While Delia and her father shared a house in Wexton, she must share a small trailer with Sophie and Eric in Phoenix. Even her search-and-rescuer career stalls in Phoenix when Greta is scared by a javelina and runs into a cactus. Delia hates Arizona whereas Eric decides to stay there.