Today Tonight Tomorrow

Today Tonight Tomorrow is a bildungsroman, a story about coming of age. Like many protagonists in the young adult genre, Rowan Roth is in the midst of this rite of passage, but the transition from adolescence to adulthood is not easy. As she reflects on the last four years of her high school life—which she dedicated to her academics, her peers, and her community—Rowan has a difficult time accepting that it will all be over soon. Her journey through the conclusion of one life stage to the start of another underscores a truth that all teenagers must learn: Growing up is inevitable, and change is never easy—but it is crucial to negotiating one’s sense of self and moving forward.

At the outset of the novel, Rowan finds herself physically frozen in place following the final school-wide assembly of her high school career. While everyone happily files out of the gymnasium, Rowan sits back in awe, knowing that she doesn’t “go here anymore, but [she] can’t bring [herself] to leave” (41). Though she is a smart person and knows that all things must realistically come to an end, she finds herself emotionally confused and stuck on the last day of high school, internally grappling with things that she is “not sure [she’s] ready to say out loud” (46).