How are the setting and the theme of continuity connected in the novel, The Last Algonquin?

In this novel, the setting and the theme of continuity are tightly intertwined. That these are closely related is pointed out quite directly early on, when Theodore, Sr. says, "I suppose I was, only then, beginning to comprehend that things had been going on here for a very long time. .. . I found pleasure in the idea that there was a continuity operating here, and that I was part of it." A more broad, historic continuity is explicitly pointed out later in the novel when the author discusses how many of the large rocks in the Bronx today are explained as the leavings of an ancient battle between Indian figures of Good and Evil.