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Linda is a nine-year-old girl that Tim attends elementary school with, and who is his first love. He takes her on a date to the movies – his first non-chaperoned outing with a girl – and is captivated by her attentive, pleasant personality. Not long after, he discovers that Linda has cancer. Soon, Linda has died, a fact that is difficult for young Tim to come to terms with. He has little experience with death, and can’t comprehend its permanence, especially not in the case of this beautiful young girl who had only recently been such an important fixture in his life. It is through Linda’s death that Tim first discovers his ability to bring people back from the dead through his unique ability for storytelling. He spent hours fantasizing Linda into being, having full dialogues with her, which often included Linda affirming that Tim’s remembrance of her effectively brought her back into existence.

Of course, Tim learned over time that recreating Linda in his mind was not quite the same as returning her to the life she once possessed. With each remembrance, Linda changed slightly from the real person she once was to the fictional creation in Tim’s mind. However, although she was changed, her essence, and the mark of her existence on the world, had been recorded into the annals of history by Tim. Tim uses Linda’s story to illustrate the point of the entire collection – to keep the essence of his lost friends alive through the power of story. Additionally, he also realizes that the collection will keep his essence alive. He and Kiowa and Norman and all the other men of his platoon have been transformed from their realistic selves to fictionalized characters – although perhaps more truthful. These stories allow them all to be reached out to and remembered by future audiences even as they inevitably fade into the past.

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