Math enters the story through his mother, who is a math professor at UCLA. Miles describes her as "nice enough looking, for a smart woman" and she describes herself as "pretty for a mathematician". The mother writes quotes by Einstein and Erdos on chalk boards. Most of the discussions of math involve the mother's lover, Eli, who works for the NSF and feels passionate about math, even though he says he cannot do it himself. He buys her a four volume set of Newman's World of Mathematics, and when he gives her a copy of The Man Who Knew Only Numbers he says "I knew [Erdos] a little when he lived with Ron Graham."

According to the acknowledgements, Simpson obtained information about math from the book Letters to a Young Mathematician and through personal communication with Andrea Bertozzi, who is a real UCLA math professor.

Unlike some other works on this list, however, the mathematics in this novel is really only of tangential interest. The main focus is on Miles' own journey from being a boy to being a man, and the joys and tragedies in the lives of those around him.