Hazel tells a bit more about her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction. The novel centers on a girl named Anna, who suffers from a rare form of blood cancer and decides to make the world a better place by starting The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera. Anna lives with her mother, a gardener with a passion for tulips who falls in love with a mysterious and eccentric trader known only as the Dutch Tulip Man. Anna wonders whether he is a con man, but when he and her mother are about to marry, the book suddenly ends, midsentence. As much as Hazel loves the book, the unfinished ending drives her crazy:

I [understand] the story ended because Anna died or got too sick to write and this midsentence thing [is] supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever […] but there [are] characters other than Anna in the story, and it [seems] unfair that I [will] never find out what happened to them (49).

Hazel has written numerous letters to Van Houten care of his publisher, asking what happens to Anna’s mother, the Dutch Tulip Man, and the other characters, but has never received a response.