So Far Gone

“Some days, reading the news felt like being on a plane piloted by a lunatic, hurdling toward the ground.

And to have his daughter not see this, to have her decide that, in fact, it was Kinnick and his reaction that were the problem—No religion! No politics!—made him feel so disoriented, so alone, so…bereft.”

In the first flashback of the novel, Walter makes it clear that Rhys is driven away not just by Shane’s provocations, but by Bethany’s insistence on remaining neutral to Shane’s aggression. This drives Rhys’s misperception that, because Bethany will not support him against her husband, she no longer needs him. This effectively catalyzes his self-exile.

“He used to imagine that, when the last copy of his book was gone, Kinnick would be gone, too, wiped from the earth. This felt like a relief at times. The world had no use for him, or for his curious little book (and, more than likely, would have even less use for the unwieldy second book he was writing, should he ever finish it). It was a kind of delusional self-centeredness, connecting his failure as a writer to the culture’s growing rejection of science, philosophy, and reason, of basic common sense. But, of course, when he was moping around, thinking about his slim foothold in the publishing world, he didn’t consider that his daughter and his grandchildren would surely outlive his little book…

Right, he thought. We live only as long as someone remembers us. Only as long as someone cares.”

Walter contrasts Rhys’s intellectual pursuits against his family, exploring a larger question of how to define legacy. This contrast underscores the folly of Rhys’s self-exile, as he had chosen to neglect his family for the sake of his intellectual pursuits. As a consequence, Rhys’s legacy is doomed to sink into obscurity unless he acts for the sake of his family. This passage is crucial in establishing his motivations for the rest of the novel.

“But once he began withdrawing, erasing himself, he couldn’t stop. Until now, when Kinnick saw that he’d been living entirely in his own head for a year now, and had inexplicably reached a place where he didn’t even recognize his own grandchildren.

‘I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time,’ Kinnick finally said to his inquisitive granddaughter. ‘To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.’

She stared at him.”

This passage reveals an important part of Rhys’s characterization, which is his intellectualism. When explaining to Leah why he dropped out of the world, Rhys quotes Henry David Thoreau, one of his personal heroes, to embolden his explanation. Leah, who has never read Thoreau’s work, is not particularly moved by his explanation. This passage effectively exposes how Rhys uses his intellect to hide from the emotional aspects of his life.

“It was possible to disappear from others’ lives, of course—from Lucy’s, from Bethany’s—but he suspected that when he woke up tomorrow, wherever he was, the person he really wanted to never see again would be staring right back in the mirror.”

This passage drives one of Walter’s deeper insights about The Perils of Escapism. More than an attempt to run from a world that no longer needs him, Rhys is trying to run from the shame of his inability to affect the world around him. His desire to vanish is therefore a gesture of vanity, one that limits his ability to perceive his own failure.

“‘How do you know when it’s really love?’ Leah asked, more quietly this time.

‘Well. I’m not sure I know the answer to that. At first, I guess, it’s just a feeling. That you really want to be with that person. You think about them all the time.’ He thought of Lucy again. ‘And maybe, if it’s the real thing, you start to want their happiness more than your own.’”

This interaction between Rhys and Leah deepens their relationship, allowing Rhys to become the only family member Leah trusts as she experiences adolescent angst at the end of the novel. Rhys’s answer to Leah also foreshadows the shift in his character throughout the novel, as he goes from thinking about his guilt over leaving Bethany behind to actively working towards her happiness.

“He even made his way back to the jewelry-box woman and slept with her, wishing immediately afterward (or technically, during) that he hadn’t, that he could have remained an implacable, selfless hero in her eyes, instead of what he actually was: an old, tired, half-horny, twice-divorced cop with bad knees, three estranged kids, and emotional dysregulation and bipolar issues, a guy who didn’t really want to hear about your job as a pharmaceutical rep, or how your daughter’s new boyfriend was a loser, or how your ex-husband had poisoned the family against you, or, really, anything that came out of your dull, pretty mouth.”

Chuck Littlefield is defined by the sense of purpose his work bestows on him, which makes his retirement years an overwhelming challenge for him. Like Rhys, Chuck uses work as an escape from self-scrutiny: As long as he has purposeful work to do, he doesn’t need to think about his failings. This manifestation of The Perils of Escapism seeps into his personal relationships, such as the one he has in this passage with the jewelry-box woman and, more importantly, with Lucy.

“‘[I]t seemed like I was being sent away, like an animal sent off into the woods to die or something. In fact, it was more than that. It was like my whole species had gone extinct.’

‘Fuck! Yes!’ Chuck slapped the steering wheel. ‘That’s how I felt after I retired! Extinct!’”

This passage cements the idea that Rhys and Chuck are mirrors of each other, even though they occupy opposite positions on the political spectrum. Chuck is the only person who sympathizes with Rhys’s self-exile, going so far as to compare his experience of retirement to Rhys’s self-pity. By driving this comparison, Walter allows Chuck to stand as a cautionary surrogate for Rhys, showing him what he may become if he continues to indulge his vanity in reckless ways.

“Rhys could recall his dad taking him to visit craggy, old Grandpa Emrys, who always walked his little ranch in a sheepskin coat that he’d brought from the old country, even though he never got around to having actual sheep on his sheep ranch. Instead, he cut firewood and bucked hay bales and did odd jobs in town to make the ends barely meet. Rhys knew his dad hated visiting his own reclusive father here. ‘That place destroyed our family,’ Leonard told him once.”

The earliest parts of Rhys’s backstory establish the origins of his escapist tendencies. Rhys comes from a long line of people who have turned away from home with resentment, but later reveal that they have a sentimental attachment that ties them to their ancestors. This drives the urgency of Rhys’s and Bethany’s relationship, which sees them trying to break their familial cycle for each other’s sake.

“The job was like that. You could see a family of five torn apart in a car accident—blood and body parts everywhere—and not so much as flinch. Make jokes about it later, even. Then some small, seemingly random thing would shiv you—like a deaf kid left alone at a homeless encampment—and you’d feel it pierce and scrape all the way to your bones.”

This passage drives Chuck’s commitment to his work as a source of purpose. Chuck is regularly exposed to the horrors of the world, which he tries to shrug off because it is the nature of his job. Occasionally, however, Chuck saves someone like the kid with deafness and realizes that his actions achieve something more than the exposure to that horror. This resonates with the impulses that Rhys and Shane feel towards the end of the novel when they feel moved to save Bethany from Dean.

“Celia insisted they not tell their daughter old classic princess stories, in which a prince came to rescue the heroine. But Kinnick had trouble conjuring fairies or wizards or magical beings, and so, somehow, he had decided that what a six-year-old really needed at bedtime was strict realism.

‘I had a failure of imagination,’ he admitted to Leah. ‘I’d come home from work and tell her versions of the stories I’d written for the newspaper that day.’”

Rhys’s intellectualism seeps into his parenting approaches in ways that are sometimes comically absurd. However, this passage calls attention to the “failure of imagination” that helps define his character. As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that this failure is emotional in nature; Rhys supplies Bethany with the bedtime stories that influence her views, but he also fails to see how his immoral actions—such as his infidelity and escapism—impact her.

“The boy’s mother met Kinnick’s eyes as he passed, and the regret he saw in that brief look crushed him. How could life be so hard?

[…]

Kinnick was crying by the time he stepped out into the dark evening.

Lisa was going to lose her baby. That’s all.

Bethany, too. And him, he’d lost his baby a long time ago. Oh, this world.”

This moment represents Rhys’s greatest fear throughout the novel, which not only covers the fear of his impact on his personal relationships, but also on Bethany’s life and happiness. Walter draws a parallel between Rhys, Bethany, and Lisa, the woman Rhys sees at the hospital, to show how all of them have acted so recklessly that they risked their relationships with the people they loved most. The worst thing Rhys can do, this passage suggests, is allow Bethany to lose her children the way he and Lisa have.

“I’d always been a daddy’s girl. At fourteen, I would have said that I was more like him…

But after that, I started seeing him in a different light. Selfish and detached. Kind of arrogant. Spending the weekends working on his ‘book.’ Of course, I was changing, too. I was so confused and anxious over the way boys were looking at me, the way they treated me. They like you; they don’t like you; they only want one thing; they get that thing and they call you a slut…

And that day, when I saw him on the porch with the woman, it was like I began to realize, Oh, he’s one of them?”

Bethany’s discovery of Rhys’s affair coincides with the point in her adolescence when she starts being perceived by boys in uncomfortable ways. This exacerbates her distrust in Rhys and widens the gap between them while also driving an inextricable link between her paternal relationship and her romantic relationships. This explains why Bethany keeps looking for relationships that can stand in for the one she has with Rhys, as well as why these relationships are always doomed to fail.

“[Y]ou describe years of this same feeling, of wanting to escape, to run away, to disappear. And it seems like this might be connected to you pulling back from your father when you saw him in your house with a woman before your parents divorced. This father who you say is more like you than anyone. You saw something that day that wounded you, and for years, you kept it secret. You kept his secret. Meanwhile, when life gets difficult for your dad, what does he do? Disappears. Escapes. Like he did from you and your mother. Like he’s done now, going to live off the grid in a farmhouse in the woods. Like you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe this behavior was modeled for you. Maybe the urge to run comes when these men remind you of your father. And maybe you and he have been running away from each other for twenty years.”

Bethany’s therapist explicates the parallel between Rhys and Bethany’s characters, showing how they both try to escape situations that feel beyond their control. This insight forces Bethany to reckon with the impact her father has had on her life and to decide whether she will continue to act as her father does or break the cycle of his influence.

“Until that moment, Bethany had been looking for a way to bring up the reason for her visit…to ask him: Did you see me? And do you know where it comes from, this desire we both seem to have to escape? Is it genetic? Are we running from each other? And how does it feel—to actually do it?

But now, she wondered, what would be the point of any of it? This man didn’t even know what grades her kids were in. He hoped to leave no trace of himself, including, she supposed, his people. That was the answer to her question.

Rhys Kinnick was the personification of selfishness.”

When Bethany visits Rhys to confront him, she recognizes the futility of her endeavor because Rhys’s actions speak for him. By choosing to withdraw from the world, Rhys has also chosen to reject the value of his family, allowing Bethany to conclude that Rhys’s self-exile is ultimately a selfish endeavor. At the same time, it is possible to read this passage as a manifestation of The Perils of Escapism, as Bethany, nervous over the possibility of confronting Rhys with the fundamental truths of her life, instead gives up on him.

“It was also when she was a teenager that Bethany began to sense Rhys Kinnick’s profound disappointment in her—his face betraying it, as if he hated every single choice she’d ever made…Even now, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Instead of becoming a writer like him, contemplating ‘metaphysical world maps,’ she was just a part-time teacher, just a frumpy housewife with two kids whose ages Rhys couldn’t bother to remember, just a nearly middle-aged woman with questionable taste in men (as if all of them had lined up and she’d merely had to point out the ones she’d wanted).”

Bethany is falling back on her escapism to avoid confronting Rhys, projecting her disappointment in herself onto him. Rhys only ever expresses disappointment in Bethany’s romantic relationships, yet Bethany is quick to assume that he is equally disappointed in all her choices. In any case, for Rhys to reconcile with Bethany, the burden falls on him to convince her that this isn’t the case.

“What was she doing up here? This was not who she was anymore. How would she feel if Leah did something like this? She started weeping, gasping for breath.”

This passage reveals that Bethany’s anxiety and self-effacement have transcended her relationship with Rhys and extended to her relationship with Leah. This lends urgency to her character arc and raises her personal stakes. Bethany’s panic attacks signal her awareness that regression into her worst character traits will estrange her from Leah.

“The young couple would preach a peaceful and simple Christianity, built around sacrifice and helping the poor refugees from the civil war. She’d had the idea even before she met David Jr., who, beneath his thick glasses, had the loveliest celery-green eyes. After she’d told him about her book idea last summer at Bible Camp—and he’d told her that he was beginning to disagree with the way his father ran his church—she could only ever imagine the rebellious boy in her book as Davy, and the courageous girl as herself.”

Leah’s novel idea represents her pre-adolescent ideals, which are focused on a personal theology that deviates from what her church preaches. She projects her ideals onto her crush on David Jr., which is why her disillusionment with him later in Chapter 6 drives the abandonment of her book project and her loss of faith.

“You know, a friend recently asked what I learned living alone in the woods. When people ask me that, the only things I can ever think of are quotes from people who’ve said it before. Aristotle. Thoreau. But I’m starting to think Thoreau might have been full of shit. If we aren’t living for others, maybe we aren’t really living.”

This passage represents a crucial milestone in Rhys’s character development. Rhys previously used his intellectualism to justify his self-exile, culminating in the Atlas of Wisdom that would have represented his legacy. He grows by declaring the futility of that exercise, learning only that he should have used his philosophy studies to better understand how to live for others. This imperative also represents Rhys’s newfound approach to Reckoning with a Broken World Through Community.

“Bethany had thought of a hundred things her father’s apology had not covered, a thousand things to still be angry at him about, a million things he’d missed over the last seven years, over the last eighteen years. But something he’d said—I’d like to start now—had given her pause. When she thought about all that her father had missed in the last seven years, since his retreat to the woods, she reflected on how hard those years had been—losing her job, losing her mother, the pandemic, the kids having to leave their school, and, in the center of it all, like a tornado, Shane’s deepening drift into this end-times theology. My God, she was tired. She had needed…something…and it clearly wasn’t running off to a music festival in Canada.”

Bethany’s resistance to Rhys’s apology adds further nuance to their relationship by forcing her to reckon with her feelings towards him. She is quick to tell herself that his transgressions outweigh his apology, but she also opens herself up to the possibility that Rhys sincerely wants to make up for lost time. A crucial part of this concession is the realization that she can depend on Rhys to help her face the challenges that fuel her anxiety. This brings the novel closer to resolving Family Dynamics in a Post-Truth World as a theme.

“‘I get it, too, the urge to run. I can’t tell you how many times. To just…go. Leave everything behind. But here’s the thing—in my daydreams? I never arrive anywhere. There’s never a landing place. And…turns out…it was not a music festival in Canada.’

They laughed together.

‘Do you think I just haven’t found it yet? Or does it not exist?’

Kinnick sighed. ‘Boy, I wish I knew.’”

This exchange resolves the tension of Bethany’s previous visit to Rhys, in which she hoped to confront him about the topic of escapism. Instead of projecting her anxiety onto Rhys, Bethany opens up about her escapist tendencies and the disappointment it inevitably leads to. Their bond becomes stronger over Rhys’s admission. He is vulnerable enough to admit that he does not know the answer, which signals his mutual willingness to be open and honest with her as well.

“Oh, how Bethany wished she were just talking to her daughter about this. She dreaded what was coming for Leah, the teenage years, all that heartache and blooming awkwardness, the cacophonous thoughts and unwieldy feelings. She could already sense her daughter beginning to pull away, slipping into adolescent shutdown mode.

She patted Leah on the leg, and they made eye contact, Leah swallowing hard, Bethany mouthing, It’s okay.”

Just as Rhys tries to reconcile his relationship with Bethany, Bethany tries to support Leah through her disillusionment with David Jr. In the Kinnick family history, Bethany becomes the first person to break the cycle of resentment between parent and child, signaling her willingness to live for Leah as Leah goes through the challenges of adolescence.

“Anyway, he remembered thinking: That is what God can do. He can make the fear go away. He can fill you up, the way He filled that smiling string bean in the red polo shirt and gave him the strength to stand up to a demonic horde of baseball players, to stand up to the bullies and the elites—

That was the kind of Christian, the kind of Charlton, that Shane had longed to be, the conqueror of fear, not its slave—”

Shane achieves character redemption by sacrificing his life to save Bethany. Walter deepens this action by digging into Shane’s backstory, showing how he has always struggled against his cowardice and how his adoption of religion is really a manifestation of his desire to be brave. By acting for Bethany’s sake, Shane embodies the bravery he hoped to find in religion.

“What rubbish, Kinnick thought, his Atlas of Wisdom. Now, at the end of life, how short, cruel, and pointless it all seemed, wisdom, what a waste that houseful of books before him had turned out to be. He looked up at Dean Burris, who stood in the middle of the driveway, panting, handgun hanging at the end of his big right hand, while, just a few feet away, Bethany held the newly dead Shane and wept.”

Shane’s death convinces Rhys of the utter futility of intellectualism. If his earlier statement about living for others made him realize that his intellectualism had to be directed towards selflessness in order to become useful, this passage represents Rhys’s disillusionment in the power of the intellectual endeavor to prevent evil from happening.