This is Ford's fourth novella. It capitalized on what an audience would expect in a Ford novella. It shows the psychological struggle of an atheist mathematician with the backdrop of failed romance and child loss. Ron Poland is constantly reminded of mistakes from his youth. As the plot line develops you see his existential crisis between being a courier and a professor. The book is divided in two between a nonlinear structure of storytelling that puts upfront the recoil back to regular life. Between the hospital, the road, and En Carcel, Ron slowly pieces together a treatise. It becomes a book within a book on political jar-gain and banters with biophysics, Darwin, and mathematics in logic. It is the Americanized ideal of what these things are. Much like Plato's 'Cave' or E E Cummings 'The Enormous Room' the novel is not dystopian, it relies on the reality of where poets and philosophers find themselves at times without help. As they do, Ron receives help despite his logical, yet indifferent viewpoints. There's an avid attempt to understand reality can be twisted for very few. The book took six months to write with much less time of what a writer does when their back is against the wall. It is a major success from all the people Ford met and received help from along his journey to be.