Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Agents of Change

Ed’s world is full of people who expect scarcity, pain, and disaster, and in their minds, hoping for more will only lead to disappointment. However, changing the narrative of their lives can risk something worse happening to them. The sender of the aces disrupts this environment from within. Messengers are subversive operatives for peace, prosperity, and love. Like Ed, they have no special qualifications, indicating that each person, no matter their background, status, or upbringing, can be an agent of change without any prior training or credentials.

Ed exemplifies the agents of change in his creativity and empathy that overcome his self-doubt and fear of risk. He gets help from the network of messengers whom the sender of the aces employs to guide and motivate Ed. Unlike these other messengers, Ed receives no reward or compensation for his interventions. This difference is meant to portray the real-life goodness that ordinary people are capable of in daily life between friends, neighbors, and strangers in their community. Acts of goodness are not just relegated to churches or charities, but rather the novel argues that everyone receives a mandate from their conscience that they must respond to. Like Ed’s initial reaction to getting the ace of diamonds, people can consider ignoring the call or decide if it’s in humanity’s best interests to accept. 

The Strength in Connection 

Until the messages start arriving, Ed leads a disconnected life. He drives a taxi for a living, taking people to their important destinations all while he has no important destination of his own. Audrey, the love of his life and one of his best friends, will not take his feelings for her seriously. Ed’s mother, Bev, despises him and as a result, he has no real emotional connection with her. His social life consists of playing cards with the same three friends. Ed lives alone with his dog, Doorman. The missions on the aces seem designed with intimate knowledge of Ed’s life, and their goal is not only to get Ed to help others but to help Ed join his past with his present. 

The question of who knows Ed's past haunts him like a riddle with the power to change his life.  Parents, siblings, aunts, or uncles sometimes do the emotional labor of maintaining family bonds. When these kin keepers do not exist, an individual's identity loses resilience in isolation from intergenerational connections. The importance of being loved for oneself is universal. Ed finds himself turning a searchlight onto seemingly random people who are chosen by the sender. He watches, he learns, he intuits, and then he acts on his instincts to make a connection with them. As Ed moves through the aces delivering messages, he gets a new perspective on community and his connections to the people in his life expand and intensify. What is revealed is a network of interrelationships and dependencies. Ed emerges from passivity into a force for good.

The Importance of Purpose 

In Ed’s rough and tumble world, there’s no clear threshold to adulthood. Coming of age happens early on the street when your childhood has been spent just surviving. Boys like Gavin Rose have already learned to defend themselves like men, many of them emerging from their youth as brutes and bullies. Teenage girls like Suzanne Boyd have babies and become a source of shame to their families. Children like Ed reject continuing their education after high school and enter the workforce early while fathers drink away the family income. Women like Audrey whose innocence was abused avoid situations where they must trust and feel vulnerable. 

Without guidance, these young people often cannot articulate their deep need for a purpose in life. The transition from youth into adulthood portrayed in the book has been stymied by hopelessness. Ed's journey through his missions shows how a sense of purpose makes the difference between standing in place like Ritchie or moving on with your life. When the aces start arriving, Ed's role in delivering messages brings meaning, structure, and purpose. The success Ed enjoys affecting people’s lives for the better gives him confidence that having a purpose in life functions more productively than maintaining the status quo.