This quantum take on Robert Frost's poem about paths diverging in the woods explores the idea of choosing different paths at the same time. Jennifer, thirteen, and Haskell, fourteen, kiss on a winter's night. A deer fleeing from predators causes a car accident, killing Jennifer's parents. Jennifer and Haskell lose touch, only to run into each other again, fatally, in a car crash as adults. As well as narrating the history and the fallout of this ripe set of coincidences, the book imagines alternative endings.

Equal parts tragedy, comedy, philosophy, and romance, the book fits many genres. Starting in nineteenth-century northern Minnesota forests, it sets the stage for historical adventure. The next chapter turns into slapstick in the bar where Haskell is the butt of a bad joke instigated by a bunch of brawling law students. Haskell reconnects with Jennifer, wearing a spittoon on his head. Setting these scenes and Haskell's tender memory of his first real kiss alongside one another upends all expectations that the book will be any one way, making for an exciting rollercoaster ride.

The shifting style, time periods, and tenor, along with the impulsive and spontaneous pace, however, build on thoughtful musings on the space-time continuum. As the characters time-travel to realize a different outcome for Haskell and Jennifer, they discuss a multiverse of parallel realities. That dead people (Haskell, Jennifer, and her parents, among others) are the conversants makes their discussions humorous. The concepts are explained in layman's terms, between friends, for their edification and amusement. In a light tone set by a royal "we," the narrator addresses readers with a high tone. Paired with characters joking with each other and zipping through time, the juxtaposition comes to a satisfying conclusion, in which threads marry a happy ending and infinite possibilities.

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