From the Prologue, the cycle of life and death emerges as a dominant theme. The impetus for the story, Cowney says, is his reaction to the death of a woman from his past: Essie. He refers to several aspects of his story that connect to this theme: the deceased woman; the random piece of bone he once found by chance; a missing young girl; and, above all, the trees, mountains, and earth to which the speaker claims he belongs. In Chapter 24, the author draws all these threads together to express summarily the narrative’s main idea: Cowney and Essie fulfill their shared destiny by returning their bodies, side-by-side, to the earth. Life and death, Cowney says, are a sacred cycle this couple will fulfill.

There is an unbreakable union of death and life throughout the novel. Cowney’s narrative contains constant references to deceased souls whose lives influence the situations of living characters. Cowney frequently asks his grandmother to tell him his mother’s and father’s stories again—particularly the mysterious tale of his father’s death. Bud rages against the yoke of caring for a child—assumed to be his brother’s and named for his brother—after the deaths of Cowney Sr.