Previous Next

Patch starts out as a headstrong, scrawny kid obsessed with pirates. He is tough despite his stature, and from an early age displays a Robin Hood-esque mentality of using theft as a means to provide for people in need. Patch is the epitome of a carefree kid at the book’s beginning, and returns from his capture having done a complete 180. He comes back to Monta Clare hardened with trauma and the knowledge of what true evil looks like.

From that point on Patch is single-minded in his search for Grace; what this really is, though, is a search for goodness. After his time in the bunker Patch can no longer see good in the world, though he seeks it out constantly in his time driving around the states, and finds it in many of the people he meets. All of these people, though, have suffered through fate—he speaks to the grief-ridden parents of missing girls, meets prison inmates who made one mistake that landed them a life sentence. Thoughts of his drunken mother and dead father follow wherever he goes, and he becomes, in a way, convinced that the world is a dark place. The remedy to this affliction, Patch’s light at the end of the tunnel, is Grace. His faith that she is still alive, that he can save her, is demonstrative of a deeper belief and hope that the world is not as evil as he has found it to be. All of the people who help Patch on his quest are in search of the same reassurance, and through their combined efforts, Patch is able to find it at last.

Previous section Character List Next section Saint Brown

Take a Study Break