48 pages • 1 hour read
Heartless
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Themes
The Search for Home and Belonging
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and cursing.
Willa Grant’s summer at Wishing Well Ranch changes how she and Cade Eaton conceptualize the true meaning of home and belonging. Although Willa and Cade have very different family backgrounds and relationship histories, they are both searching for a secure and stable home life. Willa has spent her adult life thus far “managing [her] super successful brother’s bar. Or tagging along on [her] super successful parents’ vacations. Or just stumbling through life with zero sense of direction in a family full of overachievers” (14). For these reasons, she is now ready for something new and embraces her two months with Cade and his son, Luke, as an opportunity to rethink her options and reinvent herself. Meanwhile, Cade has spent his time since Luke’s birth and his ex-wife Talia’s abandonment trying to manage his family’s ranch; support his elderly father, Harvey, and his three siblings; and be a good father to his son. He loves his home and family, but he often feels overwhelmed when he tries to manage these responsibilities by himself. These facets of the protagonists’ personal lives capture their desire for a meaningful intimate relationship and sense of peace within their domestic lives.
Spending the summer together on the ranch helps Willa and Cade decide what they want from the future and reimagine their definition of home and family. The summer season at the Chestnut Springs and Wishing Well Ranch settings are especially influential in this regard. Summer is archetypally known as a season of freedom and exploration. The long days and warm weather thus allow the characters to spend time outside, interacting with the natural world and becoming deeply immersed in life on the ranch. This rural country setting also offers Willa a sense of calm that she hasn’t felt in some time. She is tired of working around rowdy people at the bar and wishes that this peaceful summer would never end because she doesn’t “want to go back to [her] life in the city” (239). Her new surroundings feel more expansive, and she finds her heart and mind opening to new possibilities. For these reasons, she feels “grounded” as she spends time with Cade and Luke, and as the summer months progress, she comes to “feel like [she] belong[s] here” (298).
Meanwhile, Willa’s presence at the ranch gives Cade’s once-stressful home life a new calming atmosphere. He revels in Willa’s presence because she completes his family life and balances out his parental responsibilities. She also accepts him and Luke with an authenticity that he has always longed to see in a partner. Together, Willa and Cade grant each other a sense of belonging and create a new family structure. The end of their story therefore marks the start of their new home life as a couple.
The Transformative Power of Love
The novel conveys the transformative power of love via Willa and Cade’s unexpected romance. Because the two are so different, when Summer Hamilton arranges the nannying gig for Willa, she expects that “[she] and Cade [will] hate each other” (331). Instead, Willa and Cade come to embody the old adage that “opposites attract.” Willa is a fun-loving, carefree, and lighthearted 25-year-old, while Cade is a 38-year-old gruff rancher and single father. Over the course of their summer at Wishing Well Ranch, Willa and Cade discover that their differences can help them encourage one another. Willa’s hopeful, positive energy inspires Cade to engage with life in a more open-hearted manner. She reminds him that love isn’t simply protective and responsible; love can also be joyful and humorous. Meanwhile, Cade’s more serious nature teaches Willa that love doesn’t always have to be fleeting or frivolous. Thus, Willa and Cade evolve one another’s understandings of love, and they both change their outlooks on sex, romance, and relationships, becoming more well-rounded individuals.
As Willa and Cade spend more time together and experience a range of heartbreaks and joys, they become more emotionally open as individuals. At the start of their relationship, Cade is convinced that Willa will want to return to her “city existence” at the end of the summer, and he assumes that her exciting, youthful reality “doesn’t include a moody rancher with a chip on his shoulder” (132). He therefore tries to suppress and hide his burgeoning feelings for Willa because he is worried that if he gets involved with her, she will hurt him the way Talia hurt him. Furthermore, he does not want to “gamble” with Luke’s affections or risk unbalancing his son’s emotional well-being if his own romantic relationship with Willa turns sour. However, as he witnesses Willa with Luke together and spends time in Willa’s company, he becomes more willing to take risks in order to make their relationship work. Over time, Willa encourages him to confront his past and embrace life anew. Meanwhile, Cade’s love for Willa helps her to value herself in new ways. Because Cade sees and understands her, Willa realizes that she is a good person who is worthy of a strong and lasting love. Willa and Cade’s experiences of riding horses, playing with Luke, cooking dinner, making music, and enjoying family time are manifestations of their deep affection for each other. These pastimes gradually transform the characters into a loving, cohesive family unit.
The Impact of Trauma on Intimate Relationships
The novel illustrates various ways in which the lingering presence of past trauma might impact a person’s intimate relationships, and Cade’s character development is a key aspect of this theme. At the novel’s beginning, Cade is the quintessential “dark, foreboding man” whose “facial expression remains [perpetually] impassive” (36), and his seemingly intolerant outlook on life makes him difficult for others to know. Cade’s steely exterior and no-nonsense personality are largely a result of his grief over his mother’s death when he was eight years old, as he has since assigned himself to be the caretaker of his entire family. His emotional issues are compounded by the fact that his ex-wife, Talia, abandoned both him and Luke when the boy was only two. After Talia’s departure, Cade prioritized fatherhood and ranching over love and relationships, telling himself that “Talia happened once” and “that w[ould] never happen again” (151). These experiences have complicated Cade’s self-regard and his outlook on intimacy. The only way he knows how to show his love is to be loyal, hard-working, and dependable. He therefore doesn’t make room for new romantic experiences or allow himself to have fun, and he withholds his emotions from everyone, including his family members.
The aforementioned facets of Cade’s personal history complicate his ability to acknowledge, claim, and act on his feelings for Willa. Cade feels an almost immediate attraction to Willa when they meet, but he quashes these feelings because he is afraid of getting hurt again. He is also convinced that he is a “heartless” person because this is “what Talia called [him]” when she left him (165). However, the more time he spends with Willa, the more undeniable his emotions for her become. Her love helps Cade to see that even though he has been hurt and has experienced loss in the past, his trauma doesn’t have to define his future.
Cade’s internal vacillations throughout the novel capture the significant weight of trauma on his psyche. Indeed, even after he and Willa become involved, Cade continues to tell himself that he is “still too fucked-up over the shit Talia put [him] through to let [him]self have [Willa]” (213). In reality, Cade is “[t]oo scared to want something that badly” and “too scared to get [his] heart broken again” (213). The novel therefore suggests that trauma breeds fear and that fear inhibits intimate connections. Over time, however, Willa’s patience and grace help Cade overcome these fears, and her support leads him out of his trauma and into a life of renewal and redemption.
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