Berkeley is an imagined destination in Isaac English’s flight from Buell, a college in California that gives shape to his plans for going west. It is also named when Lee English tries to understand where Isaac may have gone, making Berkeley both a practical point in Billy Poe’s account and part of Isaac’s uncertain picture of a different life.

Berkeley in Conversation

Lee tells Billy Poe that she thinks Isaac went to Berkeley, recalling that it was a place he had often talked about. She checks whether he means Berkeley, California, and Billy confirms that he means the college there. The exchange does not establish that Isaac has arrived; it shows Lee piecing together his whereabouts from what Billy remembers and what she knows of Isaac’s ambitions.

A Destination on the Route West

For Isaac, Berkeley belongs to a departure he has planned for a month. He leaves Buell with money taken from his father’s desk and means to follow the railroad tracks along the river toward Pittsburgh, then catch another train to California. The route makes Berkeley more than a passing name in conversation: it is one of the places by which Isaac gives direction to an escape whose first steps are through familiar territory.

That familiar territory is itself in decline. Isaac remembers the crowds at shift change and his father lifting him, but the mill that once stood like a small city closed in 1987 and was partly dismantled a decade later. Its overgrown buildings and the town’s largely boarded downtown form the landscape he is leaving. Against this setting, Berkeley represents a hoped-for destination beyond Buell, although the narrative does not describe the college or promise that arrival will resolve what Isaac is fleeing.

Hope and Uncertainty

Isaac’s plans for Berkeley remain entangled with the danger and guilt he carries. Resting by the river, he thinks that he will get to Berkeley and then see what happens with Otto the Swede. He also anticipates that Billy Poe may eventually talk about what happened. The destination therefore marks a next step rather than a settled future: Isaac can imagine reaching California, but he cannot yet know what his actions will bring.

His California imaginings extend beyond the college. He pictures a house in the mountains of northern California, near an observatory, with a porch projecting over a cliff. The book presents this as a private vision of a life he might make, not as a description of Berkeley or evidence that he will live there. The distinction keeps the actual itinerary and the more expansive dream of home separate.

Narrative Significance

Berkeley is linked to both siblings’ different knowledge of departure. Lee has already left home for Yale University, and Isaac remembers her graduation as a moment when he could picture his own future; her path makes another life seem possible even as he recognizes that she has gone ahead without him. Berkeley consequently carries the pull of education and escape, but not certainty. In the available scenes it remains a name Isaac has held onto, repeated through Billy’s recollection, while his journey away from Buell is still underway.