Night Kites is one of Kerr's seven books that take place in Seaville, New York. While the Sweet Mouth and the Surf Club are only familiar background to this novel, the Hadefield Club and the Witherspoon Funeral Home play more significant roles. The already established small town environment, with the small-town mentality, allows readers of Kerr's other books to remember some of the earlier happenings, thereby enabling them not only to understand the thinking of the main characters, but to understand the reactions of the minor characters to the plot of this novel.

The familiarity of the setting also helps the reader to see the differences between the characters and to set the stage for a realistic parent-child conflict. The Hadefield Club is a prestigious club of which Mr. Rudd is very proud to be a member. In previous books the club has been referred to as "The...