“‘You get the world they give you, Alice,’ he said, reaching for his backpack. ‘I’m sorry.’”

Alice Wein’s dreams of becoming a writer begin when she is a child. She entrusts her burgeoning dream to her older brother, Peter; she tells him that she wants to create new worlds by crafting new stories. Because Peter lives with depression, he doesn’t see stories as escapes. In spite of Peter’s point of view, Alice doesn’t abandon her artistic dreams. She devotes her life to writing stories that can help people like her and her brother. Her first novel, Theo, disproves Peter’s theory. The fictional novel offers its readers an alternate reality to inhabit and explore.

“‘The trick for a writer,’ the professor continued, ‘is to take those eternal questions, those known bits and pieces, and put them together in a way that helps us see our world in a different light. That’s where you come in.’”

Professor Roberts encourages Alice’s belief in writing. His ideas about writing echo Alice’s. She has always felt that writing can change lives and hearts. Professor Roberts’s words present writing as a form of healing, renewal, and clarity. Alice embraces and enacts these principles via Theo. Therefore, the professor’s words foreshadow the reach of Alice’s first novel.

“Sometimes what she wrote felt more real than truth. But maybe that’s what writing was, in the end—a way to get to the bedrock, the oxygen. What humans are willing to do to, and for, each other.”

Alice relies on writing to ease her grief after Peter dies of an overdose. She doesn’t know how to logically explain her brother’s death. She can’t make sense of her loss alone and can’t eradicate her sorrow.