West Linfield

West Linfield is the Ohio hometown Alex Nilsen shares with Poppy Wright’s neighboring East Linfield, and the setting of his adolescence at West Linfield High. The book gives the town little physical description; instead, it makes West Linfield meaningful through the difference between Alex’s comparatively easier school years and Poppy’s difficult ones, then through the hometown connection that helps turn two strangers into friends.

Geographic and Narrative Setting

Alex identifies West Linfield as a town in Ohio when Poppy asks where he is from during their first meeting. They have just spent hours on campus tours and panels about city life, but have little else in common besides their dislike of each other’s clothes. Poppy’s answer—that she comes from East Linfield—startles her, while Alex brightens at the discovery. To her, sharing the Linfields seems like an unremarkable coincidence; in the scene, though, it gives them a recognizable point of connection amid the unfamiliarity of meeting at the University of Chicago.

The paired names establish a local distinction without supplying a detailed map or account of the towns. The text identifies the schools as sister schools, placing West Linfield within a shared hometown landscape while keeping the two characters’ experiences sharply separate. The town is thus less a fully rendered backdrop than a point of origin whose significance emerges through the lives and memories attached to it.

Alex’s School Years and Poppy’s Contrast

Alex attended West Linfield High and had a markedly different experience from Poppy at its sister school. He played basketball for the school and in the intramural league at his family’s church. Poppy also notes his good looks, but recalls that Alex credited his quietness as the key to being read as mysterious rather than weird. His account suggests that similar settings did not produce similar social outcomes: the traits and circumstances that helped Alex fit in did not spare Poppy from the rocky years she associates with Linfield.

Poppy remembers having believed that her peers would eventually tolerate and respect her for being herself. She contrasts that expectation with classmates who adapted themselves to be more palatable, and with the encouragement of her own parents, who supported their children’s individuality. West Linfield therefore gains its narrative weight through comparison: it belongs to the same broader hometown world as Poppy’s school years, but Alex’s version of that world was substantially less painful.

From Hometown Fact to Shared History

Their hometowns first surface as a surprising biographical detail, not as the basis of an immediate closeness. At the time, Poppy cannot understand why Alex seems pleased by the coincidence. Later, however, she recognizes that the version of herself she feels safest inhabiting is the one Alex brings out, in part because he understands her history in Linfield. West Linfield is one side of that shared regional past: Alex comes from a place close enough to be familiar to Poppy, yet his experience there was different enough to give their friendship an important contrast.

The book later imagines a return to Linfield after Alex and Poppy travel in Norway and Sweden. They plan to stay at Betty’s house while Alex repairs it, spend time with his family and Poppy’s parents, and see how their hometown fits the life they have made together. This plan is framed around Linfield generally, rather than identifying West Linfield as the precise setting of every visit. It nevertheless shifts the hometown from a source of remembered school differences into a place the couple can reconsider together.

Place, Belonging, and the Ending

West Linfield’s significance remains relational rather than scenic. The narrative gives it no extended description of streets, landmarks, or local institutions beyond the school and church basketball league; its defining details are Alex’s origins and the contrast with Poppy’s experience at the sister school. That restraint makes the place part of the novel’s larger distinction between a location and a sense of home: familiar geography alone does not guarantee belonging, while shared history can acquire new meaning through a relationship.

By the time the couple imagines returning to Linfield, Poppy’s sense of where she most wants to be is already tied to Alex. The planned visit does not erase their different pasts or declare the hometown transformed. Instead, it presents a future in which they can try that place on together, as they have tried living in New York City, and discover how it fits their chosen life.