One Summer in Savannah: A Novel

There are many multi-faceted references to time in the novel. Jacob’s profession as an astrophysicist, Alana’s “lost time” notebooks, and Alana’s broken watches are all concrete representations of time. The time motif illustrates the chief conflict in the novel for both Jacob and Sara: how to accept the past and move forward to have a healthy future. Thus, the motif contributes to The Complex Nature of Forgiveness.

The conversation at the first pizza night that Jacob attends underscores the time motif—a dilemma is posed between being able to freeze time for 10 seconds or being able to change one thing in a given day. Jacob and Hosea both choose to freeze time, and that metaphorical possibility recurs in both Jacob’s and Sara’s sections. The potential of freezing time connects to Alana’s and Jacob’s struggles with watches. Jacob fixing Alana’s watch and explaining how he found watches that don’t break is symbolic of Jacob giving Alana time to grow up and time to understand her similarities with his side of the family before having to face the truth about her father. Further, the impending deaths of both Hosea and Daniel create a time pressure for all the actions in the novel; the ambiguity of when those deaths will occur creates a sense of stopped time, like the watches and the thought experiment.