Point of View

The novel is narrated in the first person, always from the perspective of Jacob as he writes a letter to his son, Isaac. All of the memories and mentions of other characters are tinged with Jacob’s initial perspective of events and tempered with his present-day adjustments. The novel is also Daniel Black’s imagination of what he hoped to hear from his father. He wrote to answer his question about what his father, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, would “say if he could stare into my heart. This book is his response, his desperate plea” (14). Black’s decision to include only the perspective of Jacob is a humbling portrait of a man who has done perhaps the scariest thing a man of his age can do: change his mind and grow from his experiences. It would have been easy for Jacob to tell the story...