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“Grace told of how he had kept her alive with his paintings, his story, his strength to right their past, to find his passion. To love. Grace sent photographs of the white house the barns demolished, and in each he saw not the size of the task at hand, but only the slow emergence of hope against the harshest of odds.”

This quote appears at the end of Chapter 261. Patch and Saint are reunited once more on his boat, and Patch is telling Saint about the long letters Grace has been sending him ever since they freed her from Eli Aaron. For the majority of the story, Patch’s endless search of Grace has been the only thing that truly mattered to him; pursuits like painting fell to the background of his mind. Though he became a talented painter, his work never mattered to him personally—the only thing he cared about was finding Grace. This quote is a pivotal moment in the story’s conclusion because it shows that Patch’s search for Grace resulted not only in her freedom, but in the bettering of her life while imprisoned. His paintings gave meaning to her years of isolation in the same way that Grace once kept him alive during his time in the bunker. Here, Patch feels a sense of absolution after so many years of trying to do the right thing. The photographs Grace sends symbolize a justification of hope and hard work in the face of horror, and how one person’s faith in the future can inspire that same faith in so many others.

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