Pool has published poetry and reviews in a number of literary journals. He teaches Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate English in Austin, Texas. In this essay, Pool identifies themes and imagery in the short story which are characteristic of the author.

Anne Tyler is a prolific novelist who has developed a strong literary reputation. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Gail Godwin has said,

"Her fiction is filled with displaced persons who persist stubbornly in their own destinies. They are 'oddballs,' visionaries, lonely souls, but she has a way of transcribing their personalities with such loving wholeness that when we examine them we keep finding more and more pieces of ourselves."

The short story "Average Waves in Unprotected Waters," first published in 1977 in The New Yorker, centers on one episode in the life of Bet Blevins, a single mother who places her mentally disabled...