...I have the slightest bit of that road-trip feeling, that opening up, the road rising up to meet us, the marginal loosening of cares.
-- Narrator/Daphne (Day 1)

Importance: Daphne has this thought when setting off on her journey from San Francisco to Altavista. The line speaks to Daphne's perpetual craving for motion, for release from the present. The road grants her a sense of freedom and relief from the burden of her physical and psychological circumstances. Yet when she is stilled, her old anxieties return. At the latter half of the novel, it seems her decision to drive Alice to Camp Cooville is another attempt to stir up this same liberating feeling, to shift her place as a means of shifting her state of consciousness.

My thoughts are finding their familiar melancholy groove of love for my child and sadness about our fleeting life together...
-- Narrator/Daphne (Day 1)

Importance: Shortly after arriving in Altavista and settling in the...