Samuel is a scared and lonely boy living in the shell of a 30-something failure. For all its storylines, The Nix at its core chronicles Samuel’s coming-of-age: his emotional and psychological evolution into a healthy and balanced adult with a clearer perception of relationships, his family, and himself. The trauma of his mother’s sudden abandonment essentially creates Samuel’s character: his inability to trust; his hiding behind the easy dodge of snarky irony; his reluctance to engage others, particularly his students and his father; his preference for the escape into the solitude of reading (as a child), writing elaborate goth stories (in college), and video gaming (now); his inability to commit to anything long term; his lack of self-worth; and most dramatically in his decade-long obsession with the twin sister of his only friend, which reveals his awkwardness at sharing his emotions despite his deep-seated need to be loved.

Unlike a child coping with the death of a parent, Samuel copes with a mother who disappeared when he was 10, the threshold age of beginning to understand the world. Decades later, he still struggles to understand why. He is certain there must be a reason, but from his vantage point he has already judged his absent mother as a horrid person.