How does this realization make life more difficult for small boy so recently without a father?
Wills realization occurs in a fairly prosaic way at his school: he goes into his old kindergarten classroom to find that it in no way matches his memory of what it was when he was little and it was his big world. Now it seems small, dingy, and he feels pathetic for once thinking it a kingdom. During the course of the novel, Will, now ten, must re-frame his entire sense of his life. His father leaves him. His eyesight is failing him. All the things that he thought he could count on, he no longer can. A knowing boy, and a boy who has recently suffered the loss of his father, he is burdened with the recognition that he cannot trust life. The world might pull out the rug from under him at any time. During the novel, and especially as his relationship with Marlene solidifies, he learns how to trust his life again, even if he retains the knowledge that, at any moment, everything he expects his life to be can change. Caroline struggles to find a place for herself and her sons in L.A., but Erl
