When Lucy Barton first arrives at the house William Gerhardt has rented in Maine, she is overwhelmed with the natural landscape. She looks out across the ocean where there are “two islands, one was small and the other was bigger, and they had a few evergreen trees on them, and you could see the rocks that surrounded them” (18). These islands become a motif that Lucy connects to several times during the story. The sight of them helps to ground Lucy, as she is feeling lost amid the pandemic upheaval and the dislocation of moving from New York to rural Maine.

The islands put her at ease because they remind her of her childhood: “[I]n the middle of fields of soybeans and corn there had been one tree in the field, and I had always thought of that tree as my friend. Now, as I looked at them, these two islands felt almost like that tree had once been to me then” (18). Even though she is deeply entrenched in urban life and has been for many years, Lucy reconnects with nature. She returns to a connection she felt as a child, to the tree.