Robby and Whitaker's conversation is a rare moment of quiet vulnerability during a frantic shift that allows Gerran Howell to dig into Whitaker's feelings about his quasi-romantic relationship with the farmer's wife, his friendship with now-roommate Trinity Santos, and his growing concern about maintaining professional and personal boundaries.
It's his sort-of coming out story imbued with the trauma of losing his mother Amy to ovarian cancer, told via a 2000-slide PowerPoint presentation and finished off with a genuinely impressive magic trick (Sharp was a childhood magician). On the subject of finishing, it's an abundance of sordid sex tales that fill the gaps between Sharp's god-fearing childhood in America's south, and his mother's crushing death in 2010.
I read that you shouldn't let a tragedy define you, but I feel that Sarah's death is such a big part of me that I'm surprised there is no outer sign of it, no obvious mark of grief. I have been changed by it, but there is nothing to see. Outwardly we live our normal lives, but there is an inner sadness. People who do know are unfailingly kind and have helped more than they will ever know.
Linda is attracted to planes-not as a hobbyist, but she does display an enthusiast's ardor and knowledge. While she has a flight-tracking app on her phone and can identify the type and number of an aircraft by sight, for Linda, the 30-year-old protagonist of Kate Folk's novel Sky Daddy, these flying hunks of metal are erotic objects. She maps the language of human romantic relationships onto her attraction, giving all the planes male pronouns and admiring their "ankles" and "rear ends."
