Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to war-related violence and suicide.

Death and loss loom over Anne Michaels’s fragmentary narrative in many different forms, given that the interwoven stories are set partly during catastrophic conflicts such as World War I and the 1980s carnage in the Middle East, and many of the authors narrative threads focus specifically upon eras of widespread disease and early mortality. A prime example occurs in the first pages of the novel, which follow the wounding and the return to civilian life of John, a soldier whose leg is maimed in the Battle of Cambrai. World War I was, for many survivors and relatives of the slain, a uniquely traumatic experience, not only due to the unprecedented death toll but also because there was often no body to ship home, rendering the mourning process more difficult and closure infinitely more elusive. 

A resurgent interest in spiritualism sought to assuage this gnawing emptiness, promising the bereaved an ethereal sign from their loved one in lieu of a grave to visit. Struggling to regain his own equilibrium within this macabre context, John returns to his job as a portrait photographer and soon sees how veterans like himself use his portraits to cope with their trauma, often positioning themselves to hide a missing limb or eye from the camera.