“Dr. Wilbur Larch – who was not only the doctor for the orphanage and the director of the boys’ division (he had also founded the place) – was the self-appointed historian of the town.”

Dr. Larch’s ambitions go beyond helping the town of St. Cloud’s. He wishes to make the town into a story that he is telling. He has some of the world-building ambitions of a fiction writer, even while he does heroic and self-sacrificing work.

“What sort of climate would anyone expect for an orphanage? Could anyone imagine resort weather? Would an orphanage bloom in an innocent town?”

The Maine weather plays a strong role in this novel, whether it is the coldness of the winters or—in this case—the dampness and fogginess of the St. Cloud’s valley. The foggy weather suggests the town’s isolation, and the degree to which it is stuck in its past. This weather is the opposite of “innocent,” in that there is something murky and haunted about it.

“There was the human body, which was so clearly designed to want babies – and then there was the human mind, which was so confused about the matter.”

Dr. Larch is baffled by the self-deception and hypocrisy that makes people adopt babies and treat them badly, have babies that they do not want, or force other people to have babies that they do not want. He has seen all of these behaviors up close, as an abortionist and the director of an orphanage. The doctor in him sees the problem in a detached and clinical way, as the result of the warring priorities of the mind and the body.