Everett is either the narrator or writer of the entire book, so it’s important to consider that, outside of Thomas, Sarah, Joshua, and a few other minor characters, every person in the novel springs from his imagination, including historical figures and other characters like Sarah’s father who we mostly see through the lens of Everett’s writing. At the beginning of the book, he is fascinated by Thomas’s religious doubts and the theft of the cross from his church, and the two grow close as Everett begins writing a detective novel about him. However, Everett’s early drafts are hardboiled and shallow, and he spends much of the novel looking for a way into the story, including telling a historical story about a Jewish ghetto, writing from the voice of several historical figures, and ruminating on the nature between pop culture, religion, and the history of the 20th century.

During all of this, he grows closer to Thomas and Sarah; interacting with them disrupts his various writing projects, and any time he gets feedback from one of them, his writing either abandons its current premise or changes course. He struggles with his own ability to reckon with the vastness of his subject matter, and Pem pushes against his secular disdain for religion.