Fugitive Pieces is a finely crafted and beautifully honest novel about love and death and how the two complement and conflict with each other in a magnificent dance that is human life. Jakob, the main character of the first part of the novel, loses his entire family at an early age. The presumed, but never confirmed, death of his beloved sister has haunted him for years. He's so consumed by the loss of the only people he's ever loved that sometimes he doesn't notice the people who are pouring new love into his life. He gets married in an attempt to learn to love again. “I hoped that if I let Alex in, if I let in a finger of light, it would flood the clearing... but gradually, through no fault of Alex's part, the finger of light came down, cold as bone, illuminating nothing . ” (page 139) It is only when he meets the love of his life, the woman he was destined to be with, that he recognizes love and is able to open himself to receiving it. Michaela changes his life and, by helping him find the love within himself, helps him heal. When he is able to love her, he is complete and whole. His pain at losing Bella and his inability to move past her death are a direct result of the fact that without her he has no one to direct the incredibly passionate love within him. Finding Michaela is his solution, the answer to the question he's been looking for. Jakob resolves his conflicting feelings about his sister's death with the spectacular love he has not only for, but also for Michaela. The song, Anna's Theme, begins with an eerie female lead vocal, singing a melody that never resolves, only moving in a circular fashion. movement with the last note of a phrase starting the next. Slowly, the violin merges with the... center of the paper... the song ends with a deep bass chord. Michaela, with all her girlish charm and grace, is a stable and strong foundation for Jakob's troubled heart to rest on. Both Jakob and Michaela are characters governed by love. Jakob's immense and childish love for Bella makes him dominated by the pain of losing her. He is practically paralyzed by pain and almost fears loving again, for the possibility of losing again. Michaela's love for Jakob is purely love. She loves him with all her heart, regardless of what he has to offer her. The fact that she loves every single part of him, including the ugly and sad parts, allows him to share that burden with her, allowing him to heal. In Fugitive Pieces there is love, death, death because of love, love because of love, and finally, life because of love. Love and death separate and complement each other.