Though twenty years have passed since his affair with a young graffiti artist, Kia, the ramifications of the relationship are seemingly permanent: an irrevocably altered life trajectory, lasting shame and regret, and an irreconcilable conflict with his only brother.

Serving the charity in the South Bronx as the editor of their newsletter, Kenzie had earnestly set about to document the sad stories of the homeless and abandoned individuals that frequented the mission, only to meet and fall in love with the seventeen-year-old Kia.

By coincidence, a miraculous reunion is brought about when Bree realises that the man sat next to her on the flight to West Palm Beach is her uncle Dalton, and the two travellers are met at the airport by Nandy and Kenzie.

Intending on interrogating the dissolute messenger, Miss Sickert is instead dragged into an unwanted existential conversation about her own existence, which raises fears that neither she nor her afternoon guest, the obsequious Bishop Hazelton, are able to allay.

The planned reconciliation appears to have been thwarted when a storm intercepts the boat, reducing it to a wreck, and depositing its two passengers in the sea, as Willow, Bree, and Kenzie watch with horror from the shore.

When both Miss Sickert and Bishop Hazelton arrive somewhat bedraggled at the house, they find the family joined together in celebration, their differences resolved and their collective pasts forgiven.

In an interview given for the San Diego Weekly Reader in 1997, Buechner revealed his own desire to write novels similar to the late works of Shakespeare, such as The Tempest and The Winter's Tale, having reached the age of seventy.

'[8] Buechner scholar Dale Brown suggests that The Storm, like its predecessor, On the Road with the Archangel, has a 'valedictory'[9] quality: 'an undertone of goodbye, a kind of joyous sadness that percolates through the very different books, a way of summing up'.

In addition to the reoccurrence of such topics as God, death, and forgiveness, there is a further fascination with the process and effect of aging, termed by Brown as an emerging 'grief and exuberance': a Shakespearean 'mix of comedy and tragedy'.