Animal Dreams

Context

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland. She grew up in easternKentucky, where her father was a physician for the rural poor. She attended DePaul Universityin Greencastle, Indiana and graduated with a degree in Biology in 1977. During her collegeyears, she was involved in the last anti- Vietnam protests. A few years later, she obtained aMasters degree in biology and ecology from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Along withauthoring numerous novels focusing on the lives of the rural poor of the American Southwest,Kingsolver is a political activist and the author of two nonfiction books concerning social andpolitical struggles in the Southwest. An active storyteller and writer since a young age, in bothcollege and graduate school, Kingsolver took creative writing classes. She began her career as awriter working on feature articles for magazines, newspapers, and science journals. On April15, 1985 Kingsolver married Joseph Hoffman, a chemist, and became pregnant with herdaughter Camille. To fight off the insomnia induced by her pregnancy, she began to writefiction, in a closet at night. After Kingsolver and Hoffman divorced, she married Steven Hopp.Their daughter Lily was born in 1996.

Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees (1988), was followed by Animal Dreams (1990) andthen a sequel to The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven (1993). The Poisonwood Bible (1999), wasfollowed most recently by Prodigal Summer (2000). She also published a collection of shortstories, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), and a collection of poetry, Another America (OtraAmerica) (1991), in both English and Spanish. All of Kingsolver's novels have receivednumerous awards and honors. Animal Dreams was awarded the Pen/USA West Fiction Awardand the Edward Abbey Award for Ecofiction, and it was named an American LibraryAssociation Notable Book, the Arizona Library Association Book of the Year, and a New YorkTimes Notable Book.

Kingsolver's novels have attained both academic and popular success. They are widely read andoften featured on bestseller lists but also are taught in many college courses. This is due to thefact the Kingsolver writes entertaining, plot-driven stories rich in symbolism, literaryinnovation, and social commentary. Animal Dreams and several of her other novels fit into thecontemporary genre of literature of the American Southwest, which is in many ways anextension of the Western. While physical setting is of great importance to this genre, so are theconsideration of rural communities and the importance of the land, in the form of agriculture orenvironmental themes. In addition, like Animal Dreams, literature of the American Southwestreflects the particular mutli-cultural aspects of the region, where Mexican Americans, NativeAmericans, and Anglo Americans are in abundance. Although Kingsolver's novels draw on herpersonal experience and are set primarily in areas she has lived, they are fictional rather thanautobiographical. Her work does however reflect the real social and political situations of theareas in which they are set.

The main action of Animal Dreams unrolls in Grace, Arizona. Although Grace is not an actualgeographic location, it is based on any number or similar towns in the American Southwest.Like Grace, rural Arizona holds surprisingly fertile farmland, given the arid conditions of most

of the Southwest. Bordering Utah, New Mexico and Mexico, Arizona has a significant MexicanAmerican or Chicano population. With seventeen reservations, the state also counts asignificant Native American population, most notably Navajo and Apache. Until 1950, coppermining was the most important industry in Arizona. Since then manufacturing has taken over.While Arizona's urban centers hold most of its population and are fairly affluent, the sparselypopulate rural areas are some of the poorest communities in the United States.

Nicaragua serves as a global backdrop in Animal Dreams. In the author's note, Kingsolverspecifies that her portrayal of Nicaragua and of the US role there are meant to directly reflectthe political reality of the 1980s. Nicaragua, whose capital is Managua, is the largest country inCentral America. In 1979, the socialist Sandinistas and the National Liberation Front (FSLN)overthrew Anastasio Somoza, ending a 46-year dictatorship by the Somoza family. Headed byDaniel Ortega, the FSLN established a socialist government. They nationalized all of the majorindustry and launched a number of programs to support small farms through agrarian reform,as well as to establish strong national education and health care programs. The CIA secretlyorganized and supplied an anti-Sandinista army, known as Contras, and U.S. armed forcesconducted joint maneuvers with Honduras and Costa Rica along the Nicaraguan border.Supposedly, these exercises were meant to stop the suspected flow of arms from Nicaragua torebels in nearby El Salvadoran. In fact, American policy hoped to provoke a revolt that wouldoverthrow the Sandinistas altogether.

Plot Overview

Animal Dreams opens with a brief chapter narrated in the third person, from the point of viewof Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams andmemories of the past and events of the present. Doc Homer remembers his daughters, Codi andHallie, when they were young. Their mother is dead.

In the second chapter, narrated by Codi in first person, the plot line begins. Hallie leavesTucson, Arizona, where she was living with Codi and Carlo, for Nicaragua. She plans to assistthe newly established communist regime with their crop cultivation. Shortly thereafter, Codialso leaves Tucson, returning to her small rural hometown, Grace, to care for her ailing fatherand to teach high school biology. The return to Grace is fraught with difficulty for Codi, as shehas always felt herself an outsider in the town and has never had a very close relationship withher father. Her return home raises the specter of several mysteries surrounding Codi and herfamily's past: her failure to hold a medical license despite her attendance at medical school, thedeaths of her mother and of her child, and the relationship of her family to the rest of thecommunity.

In Grace, Codi stays in her friend Emelina Domingos's guest house. As the two women talk,Codi's high school relationship with Loyd Peregrina is revealed. Loyd, a friend of Emelina'shusband J.T., still lives and works in town. Re-visiting Grace, Codi is again struck by herfeeling of being an outsider. Codi and Hallie's mother died shortly after Hallie's birth. At theage of fifteen, Codi became pregnant with and then miscarried Loyd's child. She never toldanyone. Her father, the town doctor, was aware of the situation, but Codi still does not knowthis.

Codi and Loyd meet again and begin a new relationship. Loyd, a Native American who grew upon the nearby Reservation, is ready to establish a serious and committed relationship, but Codiis not ready to imagine herself as staying in one place or loving only one person. Loyd acceptsher ambivalence. They continue to see each other, and he teaches her about Native AmericanCultures.

Meanwhile, the town of Grace faces a terrible threat to its very existence. The local BlackMountain Mine has been dumping sulfuric acid and other chemicals into the water supply foryears. This water is necessary for the irrigation of the pecan and fruit trees that are integral tothe community's survival. While the men of town notified the Environmental ProtectionAgency of the problem, the only solution the EPA requires, that the river be dammed above thetown, is almost worse than the problem. The older women of the town, who meet weekly at theStitch and Bitch Club, take their own initiative. They make piatas, decorated with the feathersof local peacocks and accompanied by a note detailing Grace's problem, which they sell inTucson. Because Emelina's mother-in-law Viola is one of the main organizers of the Stitch andBitch Club and because Codi's education is of great help to their cause, Codi joins with thewomen. She involves her classes as well. As she becomes a part of the community effort tosave the town, Codi also begins to learn more about her own family's past. It turns out that thestory her father had always told her about their familythat they were outsiders in Grace whilealmost everyone else is related to one anothermay not be exactly true.

All this time, Codi and Hallie, who have always been extremely close, exchange letters. OnChristmas Day, Doc Homer receives a call from Nicaragua informing him that Hallie has beenabducted by the US-backed Contras. Codi is thoroughly distraught. She spends the next fewmonths between deep depression and frenzied attempts to find Hallie. During this period, theefforts of the Stitch and Bitch Club gain an enormous amount of publicity, and finally an artdealer arrives in Grace who offers them a solution to their problems. They can apply to haveGrace named a Historic Place and gain federal protection for their orchards and their watersupply. In helping to document Grace's historic status, Codi learns more about her own familyhistory. It turns out that both her mother and her father are natives of Grace and are related toeveryone else in the community. Her father is descended from the black sheep of the foundingGracela sisters, and therefore he tried to change his name to pretend that both he and hermother were outsiders. Although everyone went along with his facade, the whole community isaware of the truth. This discovery combined with her involvement in Grace's present strugglesallow Codi to slowly feel that she is less of an outsider, although she still does not plan to stayin Grace beyond the one-year teaching contract.

Toward the end of the school year, Hallie's body is found in Nicaragua. The Stitch and BitchClub file the Historic Place petition and the Black Mountain Mine declares that it will shutdown and clean up the river. Codi leaves Grace to rejoin Carlo, not because she loves him butbecause he is moving on and she still feels a need to do the same. However, the plane she takesto join him has engine trouble and is forced to turn around. When they land safely back inTucson, Codi immediately gets on a train and returns to Grace. She holds a memorial ceremonyfor Hallie, which all of Grace attends. As she buries the symbolic bundle in Doc Homer'sgarden plot, the two of them finally clear up the last of their secrets. Codi also tells Loyd abouthis child that she lost. In the last chapter, we see that a year later, Doc Homer is dead, and Codi,still teaching at the high school, is again pregnant by Loyd.

Character List

Codi - The protagonist and narrator of the novel. After losing her mother at age three and herunborn child at age fifteen, Codi does not want to love anything for fear of losing it. She blendsa fierce independence with a deep desire to find someone who will help give her life meaning.Unsure of her direction in life or of her connection to her past, Codi thinks of herself as anawkward outsider in Grace and wherever she goes. She slowly learns that not only does shehave a great deal to offer the community, but also that she is and always has been a belovedmember of a large family.

Read an in-depth analysis of Codi.

Doc Homer - Codi and Hallie's father and the person from whose perspective the secondarythird person narrator interjects. Although he serves as the sole town doctor for Grace his entirelife, Doc Homer, partly of his own volition, always feels like an outsider. Despite his gruffmanner and un-communicative style, Doc Homer loves his two daughters desperately. As heloses his mind to Alzheimer's disease, he also loses many of his inhibitions and is finally ableto at least voice his care for and understanding of Codi.

Read an in-depth analysis of Doc Homer.

Hallie - Codi's younger sister who leaves for Nicaragua at the beginning of the novel. Halliejokingly calls herself "the luckiest person alive" not only because of her near brush with death,but also because she truly enjoys her life. Even when she faces the horrible destruction of lifeand land in Nicaragua, she finds enormous happiness in trying to help improve cultivationpractices. Contrary to Codi, Hallie feels at home absolutely anywhere.Loyd Peregrina - Codi's love interest. Loyd would die for the land. A native american withmixed Apache, Pueblo and Navajo ancestry, Loyd is deeply connected to his Native Americanroots. The calm wisdom that accompanies his understanding of the land and its cycles leadshim to be a perfect partner for Codi.Emelina Domingos - Codi's childhood friend in whose guesthouse she lives in Grace.Emelina happily mothers her five sons as well as her close friend Codi. She leads a simple life,devoted to her family and to her community without ever losing a strong sense of herself.Viola Domingos - Emelina's mother-in-law. Viola appears to be a typical meddling but sweetgrandmother. Her devotion to her family and her community make her to be one of the leadersof the movement that will save Grace. Thanks to her meddling, Viola also proves to be arepository of local and family history.Alice Noline - Codi and Hallie's mother. Called Alice only by Doc Homer, she died shortlyafter Hallie's birth from complications arising from the pregnancy. Her life was characterizedby her extreme stubbornness.Carlo - Codi's lover in Tucson. Like Codi, Carlo does not have a strong sense of connection toany one place in the world. An Emergency Room doctor, his relationships with people arecharacterized by their transcience. He cares a great deal about Codi but is not in love with her.Dona Althea - The matriarch of her family and of the Stitch and Bitch Club, Dona Altheaexpresses her strong beliefs in off-color remarks.Juan Teobaldo Domingos - Emelina's husband. J.T. divides his time between working on the

railroad, caring for his orchard, and loving his family.Uda Dell - Doc Homer's nearest neighbor. Uda Dell cares for Codi, Hallie, and Doc Homerover the years, and is one of Codi's most important links to her childhood.Jack - Loyd's dog. Jack's extreme devotion to Loyd stems from the way Loyd saved him as apuppy, which demonstrates Loyd's connection with animals.John Tucker - Emelina's oldest son. At the awkward beginning of adolescence, John Tucker isa sweet, quiet young man.The Twins - Emelina's twin boys. Curty and Glen are curious young boys.Mason - Emelina's fourth son. Mason is very quiet.The baby - Emelina's youngest son. Nicholas learns to walk in the middle of the disaster ofHallie's disappearance, symbolizing the continuation of life.Mrs. Quintana - Doc Homer's assistant. Mrs. Quintana cares for Doc Homer over the years.Mr. Rideheart - An art collector from Tucson. Rideheart becomes interested in the peacockpiatas. Mr. Rideheart suggests the solution that will save Grace from destruction.Leander - Loyd's twin brother and best friend. Leander died when he was fifteen. He stands forthe destruction that Anglo culture has on Native American communities, as well as for theimportance of the bonds between siblings.Inez - Loyd's mother. Inez is a Pueblo Indian who still lives on the reservation. She symbolizesthe Native American matrilineal tradition.

Analysis of Major Characters

Codi

Codi wants desperately to fit in somewhere and to find a meaning for her life. Her struggle iscommon to young people of her generation, who often leave the rural town they grow up in forthe opportunities offered by larger cities, but must contend with how leaving affects their senseof belonging. Codi's struggle also mirrors Doc Homer's and that of anyone born into adisfavored, or black sheep, family. As a woman, Codi repeatedly looks to men to give her asense of belonging. However, Kingsolver's feminism becomes obvious as Codi repeatedlydemonstrates that these men cannot provide her with a purpose in life. It is not until Codiunderstands her own relationship to her community, and finds a profession that she enjoys onher own, that she can build on that sense of belonging and purpose with Loyd.

Codi's past is shrouded in a number of mysteries, all of which are linked to childbirth. Hermother died from complications with her pregnancy. In high school Codi accidentally becamepregnant, and then out of failure or an inability to care for her own body, she lost the child.Codi's failure to become a doctor hinges on her poor ability to assist a difficult delivery duringher residency. Pregnancy for Codi is linked not to the creation, but to the destruction of life.Fertility relates not only to the capacity to bear children, but also to the ability to carry forwarda family history. Codi has a great deal of difficulty in connection with past as well as futuregenerations. Although she comes home to Grace to assist her father, she does not move into hishome. While as a child Codi tried to establish herself as being connected to older generationsby calling a woman abuelita (grandmother), that very same woman insisted on Codi'sseparation from any family history, with the designation "orphan."

Codi is the modern prodigal child who leaves home, goes through a great number ofprofessions in a great number of cities, and returns home to care for her dying father and tolearn how to apply her knowledge. In returning to her home town, Codi must face her past, andas she recovers the memory of her childhood she finds that she has always belonged in Graceand that she is an integral part of the community not only because she comes from there, butalso because she has a great deal to offer it in the present. Codi's journey into the past to createa future mirrors the path of her town.

Doc Homer

Doc Homer conducts his entire life as if it were a medical experiment. Medical metaphorsabound in the chapters where the narrator is aligned with his perspective. He always attempts tobe objective and maintain himself at a distance from his surroundings.

Although Doc Homer presents himself to the other characters as intentionally and happilyseparate from those around him, he feels a great deal of sadness at the extension of thisdistance to his relationship with his daughters. His chapters focus primarily on past events,suggesting that he is attempting to remedy some wrong or to find a clue to help him understandhis life. Similarly, in his photographic hobby he tries endlessly to recreate a scene from hismemory out of other images.

Doc Homer struggles throughout the story with Alzheimer's disease, which affects his memoryas well as his capacity to communicate. In this way, the disease mimics his life by accentuatingpeculiarities that Doc Homer already showed even in perfect health. Ironically, as Doc's diseasedevelops, Codi begins to press him to communicate, and he finally becomes willing to do so,though is often prevented by the disease. Similarly, Doc Homer had tried to erase certainelements of his past by changing his name and pretending to forget that his family came fromthe Gracela valley. Again, just as Codi begins to ask him direct questions about these facts, theAlzheimer's disease affects his memory so that he truly experiences gaps where he formerlycreated his own. Doc Homer has always simply changed the subject when a subject arose thathe did not want to discuss. Now when Codi asks him about his last name, he cannot rememberwho she is and attempts to keep his hold on reality by talking about the one thing he is able toremember. To Codi, this method of coping with the disease looks exactly like his lifelongmethod of coping with unwanted questions. She is unable to distinguish either his change inattitude about communicating with her or the signs of his disease.

Doc Homer shows many signs of being completely disconnected from his community.However, he is the town doctor. He is well known to the townspeople and is surreptitiouslycared for by the older women. In addition, his article on its genetics demonstrates a deepinterest in the community. While Doc Homer's relationship to those around him may take placein the form of doctor-patient relations and scientific research, the connection to the communityis nonetheless still present.

Loyd

Loyd serves as the vehicle through which Animal Dreams addresses the concerns and thepractices of Native American culture. In many ways Loyd and Native American culture areidealized. However, as Codi comments that Loyd's view of Native American culture isidealized, she reminds us of this danger. Nonetheless, Loyd's only flaws, his wild youth, hiscockfighting, move quickly into his past.

Loyd is a fertile character, in large part connected to his status as a Native American. Thanks tohis understanding of Native American cosmology and to his being raised on the reservation,Loyd has a profound understanding of how to carefully cultivate the fertile land. The land, as itis often called mother earth, is a metaphor for the mother. People who knows how to cultivatethe earth, then, metaphorically know how to bear and raise children. In his relationship withCodi, Loyd often takes the role traditionally assigned to the woman, expressing a desire tosettle down and have children while Codi seems restless. Loyd agrees to wait patiently untilCodi is ready, and he follows rather than leads in sexual advances, afraid that he is loved onlyfor his body. All of these qualities, however, only serve to make Loyd an even more perfectman. Any androgynous qualities he may have only reaffirm his ideal masculinity.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

The Importance of Ecology

Two of the main characters in Animal Dreams have pursued studies very similar to those ofKingsolver, involving biology, agriculture, and ecology. By connecting ecology to biology andto agriculture, Kingsolver emphasizes that it is not only a politically but also a scientificallyand an economically sound concern.

Two main plots drive the novel: Codi's search for a sense of purpose and belonging, and theStitch and Bitch club's search for a way to save Grace from destruction. The destructionthreatening Grace is either the pollution or the complete destruction of the river, which is theironly water source. The plot of the story, therefore is intimately intertwined with the theme ofecology. As the reader is caught up in the plight of the characters, he or she must also becomeinvolved in the concern over the ecology of the region.

In a rural and agricultural setting, ecological concerns come easily to the forefront. The peopleof Grace depend on the land to live. The effects of river pollution are devastatingly visible inthe fruit dropping, un-ripened, from the branches. Through Codi's role as a biology teacher,Kingsolver is also able to present a slightly more complicated biological account of ecology. Inaddition, through Hallie's role in Nicaragua, the global dimensions of ecology are underlined.

The Value of Fertility

By connecting fertility to her other political concerns, Kingsolver both reduces some of thepolemical elements of Animal Dreams and draws all readers toward agreement with her pointof view. An attention to fertility in all of its myriad forms allows Kingsolver to direct a moregeneral interest in fertility to questions of ecology and gender relations.

Most literally, fertility is the capacity to bear children. Thus fertility is signaled as a key themewhen the novel opens with an emphasis on Codi's double loss of motherhood. Childbearing isessential for the regeneration of a community and for the continuity of its past into the future.The issue of fertility is not however simply a medical capacity to produce offspring. In order tobe fertile, one must also know how to preserve life. Fertility can therefore be the effect ofraising children but not bearing them, or of raising not children but animals. Where acommunity or a family is threatened with extinction, fertility becomes a key concern.

Although women bear the most visible signs of fertility and are often the most involved in itspreservation, men are also essential to the process. Most of the activity surroundingchildbearing and agriculture in the novel is conducted by women. In each case, however, onekey man contributes to the process.

As the novel indicated in varied ways, the value of fertility reaches far beyond a woman'swomb. Grace became famous as a mining town. Mines are established where the earth itself isfertile and produces precious metals. Such a vision of the earth corresponds with the Native

American characterization of Mother Earth, fertilized by Father Sun. However, in reaping thebenefits of one type of fertility, the owners of the mine caused another type of infertility.Although it is located in arid Arizona, Grace sits in a fertile valley. The water and soil combineto allow great pecan and fruit orchards to thrive. Literally, the nuts and fruits born by treescarry their seeds and help to plant them in the ground where they can sprout new trees. Fruitand nut production is part of the trees' reproductive cycle. Metaphorically, the bearing of fruitrepresents fertility in a plant. The use of the same word, to bear, for fruit and for childrenunderlines the connection between the two processes.

The Native Americans stand in the novel as the paragons of fertility, able to cultivate in thesame valley over hundreds of years and even worshipping Koshari, the kachina or god offertility, as a key deity. Industry, on the other hand, is regarded as the principal threat tofertility, in the form of Black Mountain Mine. The revolutionary regime in Nicaragua alsostands as a symbol of fertility. Its primary representative in the novel is not a president but theMinister of Agriculture.

Family and Community

Since almost everyone in Grace is related, in Animal Dreams family and community are one inthe same. This is one of the most important lessons that Codi learns. It is as she learns thehistory of her family that she grows to understand her place in her community. Having a placein a family and in a community are essential to feeling a sense of belonging and purpose in theworld. Like most other elements of the novel, women stand at the center of families. Thisbecomes clearest in Loyd's description of the matrilineal Pueblo and Navajo systems, whereproperty is passed from mothers to daughters. Although she shows the ways in which Angloculture encroaches on Native traditions, Kingsolver also uses Native American traditions as themodel of much her utopic portrayal of Grace. The community of Grace is also named after agroup of women, and the family lines are traced back to their women founders. Although somemen, such as Doc Homer, are able to carry on a family, this is done with great difficulty. Thedifficulties of a father communicating with his daughters in the absence of a mother, allowedthe Noline family to become separated from each other and from the rest of the community.

Motifs

Medicine and doctors

Doctors help to preserve the fertility of their patients. By weaving a doctor motif, andparticularly by emphasizing the role of obstetrics and genetics in the medical professions,Kingsolver adds emphasis to the fertility theme throughout the novel. The motif of medicineand doctors is found not only in the great number of characters who are doctors, but also in thepreponderance of medical metaphors, especially in the sections narrated in the third person.

The medical professions, naturally, are relied on when someone needs to be saved. Working inemergency rooms, Carlo embodies this element of being a doctor. This is precisely theconnection that makes Codi uncomfortable. She does not like the way that, as someone who hasalmost completed medical school, she is expected to be able to cure and to save people, whichstems in great part from Codi's pessimism. She does not believe that the world can be saved,and so on a microcosmic level she does not believe that she can save any one individual person.

Distance

The motif of distance has both literal and metaphoric elements in Animal Dreams. Metaphoricdistance exists between characters. It appears in an inability to communicate and especially toexpress love. In order to create metaphorically fertile community and fertile families, thatdistance must be overcome. The members of the community must talk with each other aboutthe past and about their present in order to save Grace. On a literal level, Codi approachesGrace at the beginning of the novel and again at the end. While her first approach is tentativeand uncomfortable, the second is permanent and joyful.

Symbols

Peacocks

The Gracela sisters brought their peacocks with them from Spain when they first came to thevalley that was eventually named after them. Like the Gracela sisters, the peacocks thrived inGrace. They stand as the symbolic reminders of the Gracela sisters, the uniqueness of Grace,and the connections between its inhabitants. Thanks to the peacocks, the Stitch and Bitch Clubsucceeds in publicizing the plight of Grace. The peacocks also symbolize the importance ofmaking use of the past in order to preserve the future.

The Afghan

Codi and Hallie had one favorite afghan that they used to huddle up under together. The blanketstands for their connection. Codi uses it at the memorial ceremony for Hallie to gather themementos that everyone brings. At that ceremony, Uda Dell reveals that she crocheted theafghan for the girls just after their mother dies, imbuing it with a new symbolism: the caring ofthe entire community for Codi and her family. Finally, Codi wraps everything in the afghan andheads off to bury it, just as she wrapped her child in her mother's sweater and went off to buryit. The parallel is emphasized by Doc Homer's mistaking of the one bundle for the other. As sheplants Hallie's bundle in Doc Homer's garden plot, Codi symbolically perform a public burialof her unborn child as well. Using the afghan, which was her comfort as a young girl, she givesup her position as daughter to accept one as mother.

Chapters 12Summary

Chapter 1: The Night of All Souls

Dr. Homero Noline watches his sleeping daughters, Cosima and Halimeda. The girls performelaborate rituals to hide their sleeping together; he does not tell them that he knows. They spentthe day, the Day of the Dead, happily helping to plant flowers in the cemetery along with agroup of neighbors. Doc Homer considers that the grave they decorated is that of a greatgrandmother who is no part of their family. He decides not to allow them to return to thecemetery the following year. Watching the girls from the doorway, Doc Homer feels how closethey are to each other and how distant they are from him. They have no mother.

Chapter 2: Hallie's Bones

In August of 1985, Hallie, as Halimeda is commonly known, leaves Tucson, Arizona forNicaragua; shortly thereafter, Codi, as Cosima is known, takes a bus to Grace, where the twogrew up. Codi has not been back home since her high school graduation in 1972. She is the onlyperson to get off the bus in Grace. No one is there to meet her.

Carrying her bags into town, she already misses Hallie and her lover Carlo, both of whom shehad been living with in Tucson. The home they had established fell apart when Hallie left; shewas the only homemaker of the three. Carlo, like all of Codi's boyfriends, had "loved Halliebest and settled for" Codi, which did not bother Codi. But without Hallie, no longer in love withCarlo, and not at all attached to her job as a clerk at the local 7-Eleven convenience store, Codihad no reason left to stay in Tucson. And with Doc Homer ill, there was an important reason forher to return to Grace.

Codi walks through town to the house of her old high school friend Emelina Domingos, whereshe plans to live. She will care for her father and teach biology at the high school. Codicontinues past town, through the orchards. Hearing the call of a peacock, she considers the locallegend of the nine blue- eyed Gracela sisters who came to the area from Spain to marry minersin a local gold camp, their peacocks in tow. Codi mistakes a bunch of kids hitting a peacock-shaped piata as attacking of a live bird, only realizing her mistake after she has begun tochastise them.

Analysis

On a separate page before the beginning of each chapter, a single name appears: Homero beforethe first and Codi before the second. Animal Dreams is narrated by two different voices; thenames announce the perspective of each section. The narrative voice shifts at varying intervalsthroughout the novel but is always announced. In the sections preceded by Homero, a thirdperson limited narrator shares the perspective of Doc Homer. A larger number of chapters arenarrated in the first person voice of Cosima, whom everyone calls Codi.

The separation of the two narrative voices mirrors the separation of the characters, while the

perspective of each symbolizes his or her personality. Doc Homer goes about his entire life asif it were a medical experiment. Medical metaphors abound in the chapters told from hisperspective. He always attempts to be objective and to maintain himself at a distance. The thirdperson, being more an objective point of view than first person, fits him perfectly. It alsosuggests that he may no longer be present to tell his story himself. On the other hand, Codi, themain protagonist of the story, is engaged in a personal search for meaning and direction in herlife. Her narration in the first person helps the reader to identify with her as a protagonist andalso demonstrates her struggle to understand the place of her life in the larger scheme of theworld.

Although Doc Homer presents himself to the other characters as intentionally and happilyseparate from those around him, he feels a great deal of sadness at the extension of thisdistance to his relationship with his daughters. His chapters focus primarily on past events,suggesting that he is attempting to remedy some wrong or to find a clue to help him understandhis life. Doc Homer's past, beyond his daughter's adolescence, is shrouded in a mystery heworks to maintain. Some clue to that past must be held in the cemetery, for his decision toforbid his daughters to participate in the Day of the Dead ceremonies hinges on his fear thatthey may learn some undisclosed fact.

Several elements of the plot of Animal Dreams refer to a reality outside the bounds of thenovel. The most direct of these is the war in Nicaragua. In late 1980s, a communist governmentwas elected in Nicaragua. They had enormous popular support based on elaborate plans foragrarian reform and an egalitarian distribution of wealth. Arguing that communism in anycountry in Latin America was a threat to its national security, the US government supported agroup of highly armed rebels, the Contras, in their attacks against Nicaragua's elected regime.In the novel, Codi considers her beloved sister Hallie's move to Nicaragua to participate in theagrarian reform as helping to save the world. Implicitly, the perspective of the novel supportsthe cause of the elected Nicaraguan government and condemns the actions of the Contras andUS policy.

The reference to the Day of the Dead as well as to Arizona firmly locates the main action ofAnimal Dreams in the Mexican and Native American-inflected culture of the southwesternUnited States. The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday that honors family members who havepassed away just after Halloween, on November 2. Families spend the entire day at thecemetery, cleaning the graves and planting fresh flowers. It is not, however, a day of mourning.Families bring picnics to the cemetery, visit with neighbors, and play music. When they eat,they set out plates for those who have passed on. The Day of the Dead is a holiday to rememberand to celebrate the lives of deceased family members. It is also a time to connect with familyand ancestors, both living and dead. Doc Homer's decision to keep his daughters from thatcelebration removes the girls both from a connection with their own family history and from aconnection with their community. Codi obviously feels this distance from her community whenshe returns as an adult. Not only does she enter Grace alone, she also fails to recognize acommon children's activity there.

Chapters 34Summary

Chapter 3: The Flood

Doc Homer relives a memory in a dream. There is a flood. Codi and Hallie are lost. They wentout to gather fruit when they knew a storm was coming, while he was in his workroom. DocHomer simultaneously searches for his lost daughters and remembers that they have alreadygrown up and left home.

Upon waking, Doc Homer ponders the memory that inspired the dream. He found the girls onthe far bank of the river, but, since the road was washed out, he had to call a neighbor, UdaDell, who lived on that side of the river. Her husband rescued the girls, who had gotten stuckbecause they were trying, unsuccessfully, to save a litter of coyote pups.

Chapter 4: Killing Chickens

Codi arrives at Emelina's just as Emelina and her twin sons are about to kill the roosters forsupper. Emelina has five sons, John Tucker, the twins Curty and Glen, Mason, and the six-month-old baby Nicholas. Aside from her father, Emelina is the only person from Grace withwhom Codi has stayed in touch. Codi moves in to Emelina's guest house, noticing that it isdecorated with the same peacock feathers every family in Grace collects to make real-featherpiatas. Doc Homer didn't let his daughters collect feathers, because he considered them to bedirty. Codi feels especially strange about returning to Grace because she had left to go tocollege and medical school but never became a doctor. She alludes to a crisis she had during adelivery.

Codi watches the family kill the roosters. She remembers graduating from high school withEmelina and thinks about what has happened to them since: she has traveled a great deal andcome home, while Emelina married her high school sweetheart, Juan Teobaldo Domingos, whonow works for the railroad. Emelina lives with her husband, her five sons, and her mother-in-law Viola. After the roosters are killed, Codi and Emelina sit down for a beer. They commenton how Hallie wouldn't be able to stand killing roosters or anything else, as she has always beenso sensitive to the pain of others. Emelina reminds Codi, however, that when they were childrenit was Codi who couldn't stand the sight of animals being killed, while Hallie only echoed hersentiments. Codi explains that Hallie has gone to Nicaragua to save the crops. They talk aboutDoc Homer. Emelina was the one who told Codi when he started losing his way around town.

Codi goes into her house and thinks about Hallie, not wanting to imagine her so far away. Codifells like a drifter, while she sees her sister as the brave one who holds her together, althoughshe remembers that it wasn't always so. She thinks about when they lived together duringcollege. It was because she liked being with her sister so much that Codi stayed in Tucson formedical school, where she met Carlo. Hallie became involved with Central American Refugees.Hallie and Doc Homer, Codi thinks, devote their lives to causes, while Codi believes that it isnot possible to move mountains.

Analysis

Although here it is only a dream, Doc Homer often confuses the past and the present. Hisslowly advancing Alzheimer's disease makes much of his waking reality function like thisdream, where past and present blend together. This particular dream and the accompanyingmemory also indicate his incapacity to protect or to save his daughters. Despite his desire tomaintain himself and his family separate from their community, he must rely on that verycommunity in order to keep his children alive. Doc Homer's neighbors never hesitate to cometo his aid; he is much more connected to them than he would like to admit.

Life in Grace is intimately connected with nature. The joys and disasters of the communitycenter around the river, as their livelihood depends on it. As the community doctor, DocHomer's business does not depend directly on the river. Nonetheless, the river has the power oflife and death over his family.

Like Doc Homer, Codi is more connected to her community than she thinks. EmelinaDomingos is the symbol and the key to that connection. Despite their different paths in life,Emelina and Codi are dear friends. They share not only childhood memories but also a deepadult friendship. As someone who has known Codi her whole life, Emelina is able to help Codito recover her own past. Memory in Animal Dreams is best constructed and recorded in acommunity. Codi sees her sister as the one who cares about the welfare of others. Emelinareminds her that Hallie's sensitivity stemmed from Codi's. As she views her past in the light ofnew memories given to her by others, Codi also gains a new vision of herself in the present.Past, present and future are intertwined through personal and communal memory.

Although she does not have Alzheimer's disease like her father, Codi's memories are cloudedby a series of traumas to which are only alluded. These allusions weave a mystery around Codithat is similar, and connected, to the mystery of her father's past. The mysteries surroundingCodi's past are all linked to childbirth. In chapter 4, the mystery of Codi's failure to become adoctor is raised; it hinges on a problem she had during a delivery she assisted.

Fertility, of people and of the land, is a key theme in Animal Dreams. Emelina's five childrenestablish her as a fertile character. Fertility relates not only to the capacity to bear children, butalso to the ability to carry forward a family history. Emelina's household consists of threegenerations. Codi on the other hand appears to have a great deal of difficulty in connection withpast and future generations. Although she comes home to Grace to assist her father, she doesnot move into his home. In addition to having no children, Codi was unable to assist anotherwoman in delivery.

Chapters 57Summary

Chapter 5: The Semilla Besada

Monday morning, Codi goes to Emelina's for breakfast. J.T. is in El Paso because the train heconducts was involved in accident, and he has to stay for an investigation. The kids get ready togo to day camp, and the women talk about the family. Emelina explains that the derailment wasdue to a problem with the track, but all of the men had to take a drug test anyway, and J.T. isconcerned because he just ate poppy seed cake. Two other men they had known in high school,including Loyd Peregrina also work on the train, and Emelina informs Codi that Loyd livesnearby,. Codi has a strong reaction to this information. Codi explains the end of herrelationship with Carlo: she had wanted him to "tell me the secret to a meaningful life" andfinally realized that he could not do that. Holding Emelina's baby, Codi thinks briefly abouthow she almost became a mother.

Codi thinks about how she and Hallie referred to Emelina's grandmother as Abuelita when theywere young. Abuelita and most of the other women in town called the sisters huerfanas, orphangirls, although they did not realize the girls understood Spanish when they did so.

Emelina and Codi spend the day visiting with the people in the town who appear to feel as outof place with Codi as she feels with them. Codi thinks about how Doc Homer instilled in herand Hallie the notion that they were different from their peers because of the family to whichthey belonged. Revisiting Grace fills Codi with memories. She can't sleep and walks outwondering if she can still find her way to Doc Homer's. She remembers, paradoxically sinceshe knows she was not present, the day of her mother's death when she was three years old. Hermother had never flown and hated the idea. Her kidney was failing. A National Guardhelicopter came to take her to the hospital, but she died before she could be lifted off theground. In her musings, Codi stumbles on the path for which she was looking. She turns back,deciding to wait until morning to visit Doc Homer.

Chapter 6: The Miracle

Codi remembers herself at fifteen. She remembers carrying her baby, and the dreams she hadabout losing it. In one of her four dates with Loyd Peregrina, Codi had gotten pregnant. She toldno one, not even Loyd or Hallie. Codi feels that the pregnancy and its secrecy kept her distantfrom the people she knew.

Analysis

Codi's troubled relationship to fertility is explained by the two events that framed herchildhood: the deaths of her mother and of her unborn child. Pregnancy for Codi is linked not tothe creation but to the destruction of life. Similarly, for Codi, love is attached to loss. Anorphan has no family. While Codi tried to establish herself as having a family by calling anolder woman abuelita (grandmother), that very same woman insisted on Codi's separation fromany family, with the designation "orphan." Especially in a town where almost everyone is

related in some way, having no family symbolizes having no community. The families of Graceare connected by their common descent from the Gracela sisters. The sisters came to the areafrom Spain, so we can assume that in addition to their blue eyes and their peacocks, they alsocontributed to the prevalence of the Spanish language in the town. As they thought that Codiand Hallie did not speak Spanish, the older women of the town assumed another level ofseparation between the girls and the community. Codi and Hallie did understand Spanish, butnever told anyone, perpetuating the belief in their outsider status.

Codi's confusion about her memory of her mother's death is consistent with the confusing flowbetween past and present and between dreams and memories. Secrecy causes these confusions.Secrecy is also responsible for the separations between community members that disrupt theconservation of true memory. Codi was born into her father's secrecy and distance from theother community members, but she furthered the tradition by withholding knowledge of herpregnancy from Loyd, her sister, her friends, andas far as she knewfrom her father as well.In dreams and dreamlike states, however, even memories and connections that are blurred bysecrets are able to reemerge. Thus while Codi thinks that she has lost her connection to thelayout of Grace, as soon as she lets go of consciously looking for the path to her father's house,she finds it.

Codi's relationship with men is caught between two opposing poles. On the one hand, shedesperately wants to find a man who will give meaning to her life. On the other, she does notallow herself to love anyone because she fears that as with her mother and her child, thosewhom she loves will end up leaving her. The one person she does allow herself to truly love isher sister Hallie. And although she cannot accept the direct love of a man, she does acceptCarlo's love indirectly: she accepts the idea that she and Carlo can be connected through theirmutual love for Hallie. This understanding of their relationship appears to be primarily aninvention of Codi's, as Carlo never seems to express any particularly erotic feelings towardHallie. At the opening of the story, Hallie leaves Codi, although they remain connected throughletters, and Codi leaves Carlo.

Chapters 79Summary

Chapter 7: Poison Ground

Codi helps Emelina to organize her yearly "little fiesta" for Labor Day weekend. School startsthe following Tuesday. Codi remembers how she applied for the job. She didn't think she had achance because she did not even have a teaching certificate. Codi is nervous about the start ofschool. Emelina tells Codi that J.T. and Loyd will both be at the fiesta. Codi controls herreaction.

The party reminds Codi of a high school reunion. She talks with Trish Garca and tries to provethat she has grown up better than the former cheerleader. Loyd comes up to Codi, and theybegin talking as if they had seen each other the day before, flirting. Codi overhears the old mentalking about the fruit drop that is attacking the trees; the disease is due to the sulfuric aciddumped in the river by the Black Mountain Mine. The Environmental Protection Agency hasapparently just intervened, but the men still think all of the trees in the canyon may die.

Chapter 8: Pictures

Codi walks up by the old Black Mountain Mine and the hospital at which her father works. Sheruns into Uda, an older woman whom she does not recognize, but who clearly remembers her.Uda tells her she looks just like her mother.

Codi remembers back to two years before when Doc Homer told her of his illness. She hadn'tseen him in a long time, and they organized a meeting at a scientific conference Codi wasattending in Las Cruces. They met for drinks in a cheesy Mexican bar, and Doc Homer told herhe had "a terminal disorder of the brain." They immediately fell into the old patterns of theirrelationship. He asked her to tell no one, not even Hallie, and Codi kept quiet, even though shewanted to protest. As she thinks about her father's illness and the difficulties it will pose to hisextreme self-sufficiency, she begins to understand and to forgive him.

Codi finds Doc Homer working in his dark room; photography is his one hobby. Codi wandersaround the house, remembering and exploring it. Noticing the collection of the AmericanJournal of Genetics, she considers the article he once published there on inbreeding in Graceand thinks that everyone in the town is related except for her family. Finally, Codi knocks onthe darkroom door and is invited in. To her surprise, her father looks exactly the same asalways. They have a brief conversation about how everyone in Grace knows exactly what she'sup to, while she can't even remember who they are.

Back at Emelina's, on the night before school starts, Codi's insomnia sinks in as she remembersher recurring nightmare of suddenly going blind. Emelina tells Codi that Uda Dell used to takecare of her and Hallie when they were little, and that it was Uda's husband Eddie who saved thetwo girls from the riverbank. Codi does not remember,and is distressed that everyone in townseems to know more about her past than she herself does. After Emelina leaves, Codi writes toHallie in Managua, telling her about being back in Grace and asking her if she remembers the

night on the riverbank.

Chapter 9: The Bones in God's Backyard

Arriving at the high school for the first day of classes, Codi remembers when she was a studentthere. That night, she and Emelina talk about school and about the events in town. Viola and herfriends hold a meeting of the Stitch and Bitch Club in the living room, talking in Spanish aboutthe peacocks and the fruit trees.

When Emelina asks her to look at a lump on Mason's hand, Codi acquiesces but is filled withdiscomfort at finding herself viewed as a doctor since she does not have her medical license.The two women continue to muse over old high school memories. In the day's mail, a letterarrived for Codi from Hallie, dated a few weeks earlier. In the letter, Hallie tells of her drivethrough Mexico. Codi considers with what depth of emotion Hallie has always reacted to otherpeoples' pain.

On Friday night, Loyd shows up at Codi's door. They talk about the railroad and Loyd's dogJack. Loyd, who is part Apache, tells Codi a little about Native American folklore and about hispast. He grew up with his twin brother, who has since died, in Santa Rosalia Pueblo, where hismother still lives. Loyd has to leave because he is on call at the railroad, but he invites her todrive up to Whiteriver with him the following weekend; Codi accepts.

Analysis

The first four chapters established a pattern of switching between narrators at each chapter. Thestructure of the novel, however, does not continue this evenly. Codi emerges as the primarynarrator not only because of her first person voice, but also because of the number of chapterswhich feature that voice. While Homer's chapters tend to be fairly short, Cosima's vary inlength. Also, while Doc Homer lives increasingly in the past, Codi simultaneously reconstructsher past and builds her future.

Doc Homer shows many signs of being completely disconnected from his community.However, he is the town doctor. He is well known to the townspeople, and is surreptitiouslycared for by the older women. In addition, his article on its genetics demonstrates a deepinterest in the community. Doc Homer's relationship to those around him may take place in theform of doctor-patient relations and scientific research, but the connection is still presentnonetheless.

Although Grace looks to Codi exactly as it did when she left it, she overhears the men talkingabout a significant change. Grace was a mining town for years. It was also set in a fertile valleywhere families raised pecan and fruit orchards. As the mine lost importance, the men turned tothe railway for jobs but also kept up their orchards. Now the orchards are showing signs ofdestruction from the mine's waste. Industry will become paired with government institutions todemonstrate the devastating effects of inattention to the land. Concern over the fruit tree dropseems to be limited to the men of the town, as they talk amongst themselves. They trust thegovernment institutions, in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to remedythe situation. Although they do not talk about it with the men, it turns out that the women are

also concerned about the trees. Their relationship to established patriarchal systems is quitedifferent from the men's. They talk about the trees at their sewing club, showing that their rolesas mothers and homemakers is intimately connected to their concern for the welfare of theland.

Since Codi left at the end of high school and lost her child at around that time, those years areher primary point of reference to Grace. Although in many ways she has now come full circle,teaching instead of studying at the high school, her emotions have yet to catch up to the realityof the situation. Loyd's return to her life starts the process of Codi's reintegration into thepresent of Grace. While with everyone else Codi talks about her past, she and Loyd pick up atthe present, even though they share a past connection. Loyd went to high school in Grace, buthe is not a member of the community descended from the Gracela sisters. Loyd belongs to acommunity even more connected to the valley than the Gracela descendants: the native peoplesof the area. Native American cosmology offers an understanding of the past and anunderstanding of the land that serves as the ideal for the integration of humans into habitat andhistory.

Chapters 1012Summary

Chapter 10: The Mask

Doc Homer examines a pregnant teenager and thinks about Codi's pregnancy. He knows thatshe is in her fifth or sixth month, but does not know how to tell her as much. Feelingresponsible and helpless, he is unable to say or do anything.

Chapter 11: A River on the Moon

The day before Codi and Loyd are supposed to go to Whiteriver, Loyd is called in at work for aweeklong trip. Helping J.T. to prune the trees, Codi finds out that in Loyd's spare time he fightscocks. Codi is disturbed by the news of Loyd's cockfighting, but J.T. explains that it has to dowith carrying on a family tradition, and Codi respects his warning to hold off judgment.

Loyd visits Codi with some regularity, and they develop a comfortable friendship, althoughCodi tries not to become to attached to wanting him to be there. One night they kiss, promptingCodi to have a strange dream in which she tells Hallie about the kiss and Hallie ignores her.Codi's dream life is rather active other nights as well. She dreams of Carlo, who has written hera friendly letter. She remembers when she and Carlo first got together, during their internshipsin medical school. Then her mind wanders to the year that Carlo worked at a clinic in ruralCrete. She refers again to the fact that she did not have a license to practice medicine.Commenting on her slight discomfort with a life spent following her boyfriend, she provides afew more details about her lack of a medical license, explaining that she had dropped out ofmedical school during her last months of residency. She refers again to an incident with adifficult birth.

The school year progresses. Codi establishes a fairly good relationship with her students. On anespecially hot day, they go to the river and collect water samples to look at under microscopes.When they try to examine the life forms they find in the water, however, they discover thatthere are absolutely none. They test the pH and find that the water has in incredibly high acidcontent. Appalled, Codi talks to Viola about the water. Viola explains the dumping from BlackMountain and informs her that the Environmental Protection Agency only requires that BlackMountain divert the water away from where people live. In order to do this, they will damn theriver and deprive the orchards of all their water. The question has already been discussed at atown meeting, and there appears to be no alternative.

On a Saturday night in October, Codi accompanies Emelina to a dance concert at the outdoorrestaurant run by Doa Althea's family. The two women talk about J.T. and other oldacquaintances. Emelina teases Codi about her date the next day with Loyd. In an attempt to dealwith her expectation that Loyd would not remain interested in her for long, Codi tells Emelinathat they would not make a good couple. As they talk, the baby chokes, and Codi saves his life.Codi is as perturbed as Emelina is grateful over her intervention. Codi sleeps in the baby'sroom that night, thinking about Loyd and realizing that despite her protests to Emelina, she will

have sex with him.

Chapter 12: Animal Dreams

On Sunday morning, Codi struggles over her outfit until Loyd arrives. On the way out of town,they stop at the post office, and Codi gets another letter from Hallie, dated three weeks earlier.In the short letter, Codi writes that she is settling down happily in Nicaragua, helping a farmingcollective to improve their cultivation practices. She adds that she of course remembers the dayin the riverbank and is surprised that Codi might not. The letter prompts Codi to ask Loyd ifthere is anything for which he would die. His answer, "the land," is not clear to Codi.

They enter the Apache reservation fifteen minutes north of Grace, and Loyd explains some ofthe history of land ownership in the region. While Loyd buys his birds, Codi waits outside,listening and observing the reservation life. They continue driving north, talking about Loyd'syouth in the area. As they go on, Loyd puts his hand on Codi's thigh, which she enjoysimmensely. They stop at the Kinishba, which Loyd describes as eight hundred year-old"prehistoric condos," built by his mother's people, the Pueblo Indians. Loyd explains thearchitecture and irrigation systems, until Codi pulls him over and begins to kiss him. They endup making love. As they talk later, Loyd reveals that he has never brought another person tothat spot but that he had been looking forward to introducing Codi to it for a long time. He alsoapologizes for being so inconsiderate of her when they were in high school. For a moment,Codi thinks he will apologize for getting her pregnant, but, to her relief, he appears to have noidea. Next, they wonder about Jack's and then other animals' dreams, as Loyd tells Codi that hecares for her a great deal and impresses her deeply with his interest in her thoughts, which aresimilar to his.

Analysis

Although he was unable to communicate with his daughters, Doc Homer was incrediblyconcerned about and involved with their lives. His incapacity to tell them what he knew,however, often prevented him from being of immediate assistance. It is only as he begins tolose his mind that he can tell them how much he has always known. However, his illness oftenprevents him from communicating directly and clearly with anyone, and he ends up saying to acurrent patient what he meant to say decades earlier to Codi. As the only doctor in Grace, DocHomer has assisted in almost every pregnancy and birth in the town. In this way, he is one ofthe few men to be closely linked to fertility.

The prevalence of cock fighting on the Reservation undoes any simple idealization of NativeAmerican culture in the novel. Just an all other communities, life on the Reservation is plaguedwith problems such as alcoholism and destructive behavior. It is impossible, however, tosimply judge any one action or even any pattern of behavior as good or as bad. Loyd'scockfighting, for example, is part of his connection to his father, and cockfighting in general isa relatively harmless distraction for the men and women on the Reservation. Althoughultimately Codi still disapproves of cockfighting, she also allows herself to understand it and tosee that her judgment is a personal one with which she cannot expect everyone to agree.

Codi's relationship to her medical skills is incredibly troubled. Although she is able to use her

skills to help people and even to save a life, she is haunted by her lack of a license and the asyet undisclosed event that led to her leaving medical school. More than just the realization thatshe does not have a license to practice medicine, Codi does not want to be viewed as alifesaver. Saving lives, in her mind, is the concern of Doc Homer and Hallie, not of hers.

Although she was aware of a problem, Codi does not become involved in Grace's river until achance school project brings it home to her. Codi is not a crusader; she does not want to beinvolved in causes. However, when a problem presents itself to her, she does not ignore it.After understanding the enormous damage being caused by the mine, Codi takes the step ofasking Viola about it directly. Codi would like to trust, as the men do, in the effectiveness ofthe Environmental Protection Agency.

In her relationship with Loyd, Codi takes an active role. She is comfortable and confident in hersexuality. Although in her memories of Loyd in high school he was a sexually voraciousteenager who slept with as many girls as he could, now he and Codi are on equal footingsexually. He is the one to speak first of caring for her. The novel presents sexuality in matter-of-fact terms. Theirs is not a case of love at first sight, but of slow, stuttering development. Theromance between Codi and Loyd is important, but it is not idealized and does not takeprecedence over the elements of the story, just as their sexual attraction for one another doesnot overrun their emotional connection. In fact, Codi seems to be as attracted to Loyd's sense ofhistory and community as she is to his body.

Chapters 1314Summary

Chapter 13: Crybabies

In his darkroom, Doc Homer thinks back to twenty years earlier when he changed his last nameand his realization that Codi was no longer pregnant. Although he thinks explicitly aboutmemory and tries to keep his straight, Doc wanders back and forth between past and present.He remembers as if it just happened the night of Codi's miscarriage.

Codi is about six months pregnant. She locks herself in the bathroom. Doc Homer asks her ifshe needs help but does not confront her. She asks for Hallie, whom she convinces to go find aparticular black sweater that belonged to their mother. Hallie gives it to her, not realizing whatis going on. Doc Homer listens as Codi cleans the bathroom, then waits in the dark and watchesher sneak out of the house carrying a bundle wrapped up in the black sweater. He follows herout of the house and down to the arroyo, where he watches her bury the baby. Back in the housetogether, he wants desperately to tell her that he knows what has happened, but he can't figureout how. When she asks for aspirin, he instead gives her medication that will be better for hersituation. She takes it without comment.

Chapter 14: Day of the Dead

On the last Monday of October, one of Codi's students, Rita Cardenal, announces that she isquitting school. Rita is pregnant with twins and says that she is too tired to do her homework.The next day, Codi decides to add an unscheduled section on birth control for her class. Whensome of the students snicker and suggest that the school board might not approve, Codi repliesthat she doesn't much care what the school board thinks because she doesn't plan on teachingthere for more than a year. Codi includes the unit that day in all of her classes, realizing that asmuch as it is intended to instruct the students, it is also intended to insure that she will not beasked to teach there again. At the end of the day, she thinks about how she does not like to everbecome rooted in any one place and also about Hallie's letters, which encouraged her not togive up the fight against Black Mountain just because of the news about the dam.

Rita Cardenal calls Codi to tell her about her last visit to Doc Homer's. While performing hercheckup, Doc Homer apparently had a memory lapse and began talking to her as if she were hisown daughter. When Codi explains that Doc Homer is losing his mind, Rita says she knows andthat rumor has it that Codi has come to take his place as the town doctor. Vehemently denyingany such thing, Codi talks to Rita about the difficulties of living in such a small town, whereeveryone knows each other's business.

Codi goes straight to the hospital to find Doc Homer. His assistant, Mrs. Quintana, says he justleft to run a few errands, so Codi tries to follow him on his mixed-up path of forgetting andremembering where he was headed. She catches up with him back at his house at suppertime.They finally talk about Doc Homer's illness, disagreeing about how capable he still is toperform his duties and finally coming around to the fact that Codi never actually became a

doctor. Doc Homer asks her point blank what happened. When she faced an incredibly difficultand potentially fatal delivery, Codi explains, she freaked out, blanked out, and left in themiddle of the procedure. To her surprise, Doc Homer's only reaction is to tell her she need notever practice obstetrics and to reassure her that losing one's nerve is a common occurrence,even for doctors. The deep understanding of Doc Homer's reaction allows Codi to cry and thentell him that she never wanted to be a doctor.

A letter from Hallie informs Codi that there has been some Contra activity in her area but thatshe is fine and very happy.

On Halloween, Codi takes Emelina's children trick-or-treating while Emelina stays home tohand out candy with the baby. For the Day of the Dead, Codi joins Emelina's family and the restof the town, at the cemetery, cleaning and planting new flowers, just as she did when she wasyounger. From the graveyard, they can see the beginnings of the dam. Viola tells Codi that themen on the council have decided to file a lawsuit, which could last about ten years. When Codiasks if anyone has publicized the problem, Viola reminds her that no one cares much about asmall town like Grace. Wandering around the cemetery trying to gather up Emelina's sons,Codi finds the Nolina plot, including a grave with the name Homero Nolina, almost the same asher father. Viola tells her that, contrary to coming from Illinois as Codi believed, the Nolinascame from Tortoise River, further up the canyon. One of the Nolinas had married one of thefive famous Gracela sisters but that they had never fit in well. Before they leave, Codi puts amarigold on Homero Nolina's grave.

Analysis

Although he was never direct, Doc Homer carefully followed every detail of Codi's pregnancy.His inability to talk with her even as he listened to her having a miscarriage shows the extremedifficulty of father-daughter communications. Codi's continuous sense of the absence of amother figure in her life suggests that the problem is not simply one of parents and children,but particularly one of fathers and daughters. Although Doc Homer knows everything about themedical processes of pregnancy and childbirth, he knows nothing of how to talk with his owndaughter about her pregnancy, even about the medical aspects of it. If he had been able to talkto her about it, Doc Homer might have been able to prevent the miscarriage, which wasprobably due to Codi's severe malnourishment during the pregnancy. Codi connects the loss ofher child to the loss of her mother by wrapping the baby's body in her mother's sweater. Byburying the body by the riverbed, she also connects the death of the baby to the death of thecoyote pups that she and Hallie had been unable to prevent years before on the night of therainstorm. Although he is unable to help Codi directly, he does follow her at a distance, makingsure that she is safe and also preserving for memory the location of the child's burial.Ironically, by the time he tells Codi that he knew about her pregnancy, he will no longer haveenough of his mind intact to tell her where that location is. In addition, when Codi returns homeand asks him for aspirin, Doc Homer instead gives her pills that will ease the pain withoutcausing more bleeding. Years later, Codi remembers this detail and realizes that it was part ofhis attempt to communicate with her.

Rita Cardenal's pregnancy serves as a device to uncover both Doc Homer's and Codi's secrets.When he examines Rita, Doc Homer gives her all of the information about nutrition that he

wished he had given to Codi. And when Codi hears that Rita will have to drop out of schoolbecause of the pregnancy, Codi gives all of her classes the lesson in birth control that she wouldhave needed to hear in order to prevent her own pregnancy. Each step that Codi makes toaddress the problems and secrets of her past brings her greater success in the present. Sheconducts the classes on birth control thinking that the school board will not approve, but this isinconsequential to her because she does not want to teach again the following year. These verysame classes as well as her attitude of not caring what the school board thinks seal herpopularity among the students and contribute to her actually receiving an offer to stay on at theschool.

On the Day of the Dead, Codi uncovers the secret that Doc Homer had hoped to hide from herby keeping her away form that celebration during her childhood: the Nolina graves. Codirealizes that her father's contention that his last name was Nolina and that his family was fromIllinois may not be true. Viola confirms that Doc Homer's family is in fact from that area andthat he himself is a descendant of the Gracela sisters, but she refuses to go into any more detail.Codi realizes that she is not as much of an outsider to Grace as she has always believed andbegins to search further for her family's past.

Chapters 1516Summary

Chapter 15: Mistakes

That night, Codi stops by Doc Homer's to ask him about the grave with his name on it and thepossibility of their having any relatives from the area. Confused by his lapse of memory as towho Codi is and what she is asking him, Doc Homer ignores her questions and tells her he isbusy.

Chapter 16: Bleeding Hearts

Winter arrives. Codi gives up on her father's family but tries to find out more about her mother.Despite what she had been told as a child, Viola assures Codi that her mother died ofcomplications relating to Hallie's birth. Viola also tells Codi that everyone besides Doc Homercalled her mother Althea, but when Codi asks if she is in some way related to Doa Althea,Viola will say no more.

The Stitch and Bitch Club holds a meeting about the river, at which Codi is Viola's guestspeaker. Codi explains the chemical aspect of the pollution. To Codi's surprise, the women askher if there is any way to recover the river water. Codi concedes that if Black Mountain stoppeddumping chemicals into the water, it would eventually return to being safe. After Doa Altheatranslates Codi's speech into Spanish, the women begin to discuss immediate measures.Officially, they plan mass demonstrations to start the next morning and unofficially supportvandalism of the mining company's equipment.

Hallie sends another letter telling of the assassination of three of the local teenage girls.

Loyd often spends the night at Codi's; she finds he is a perfect cure for her insomnia. But whenshe mentions the Lone Ranger and Tonto to him one day, he accuses her of thinking of him likea TV Indian, "dumb but cute." It turns out that he would like to have more than a casualrelationship with her. She protests that she's not going to be around for long because she is stillsearching for a feeling of home and a sense of purpose in life, but he accuses her of thinking heis not good enough for her. Loyd does understand her sense of not belonging, however, andinvites her to a cockfight. Codi accompanies Loyd to the next cockfight on the reservation. Sheis sickened by the sight but appreciates the bond Loyd shares with his birds. On the way back,they talk about how much cockfighting bothers Codi. Loyd says he'll give up cockfighting forher.

Analysis

Alzheimer's disease affects the memory as well the capacity to communicate. In this way, thedisease accentuates the particular difficulties that Doc Homer already showed even in perfecthealth. Ironically, as the disease sets in Codi begins to press Doc Homer to communicate, andhe becomes willing to do so but is often prevented by the disease. Similarly, Doc Homer hadtried to erase certain elements of his past by changing his name and pretending to forget that

his family came from the Gracela valley. Again, just as Codi begins to ask him direct questionsabout these facts, the Alzheimer's disease affects his memory so that he truly experiences gapswhere he once would have to create them. Doc Homer has always simply changed the subjectwhen a subject arose which he did not want to discuss. Now when Codi asks him about his lastname, he cannot remember who she is and attempts to keep his hold on reality by talking aboutthe one thing he is able to remember. To Codi, this method of coping with the disease looksexactly like his lifelong method of coping with unwanted questions. She is unable todistinguish either his change in attitude about communicating with her or the signs of hisdisease.

The several mysteries of the novel are now beginning to unravel. Those pertaining mostdirectly to Codi have been revealed. Codi's failure to complete her medical degree has beenexplained, as has the loss of her child. She has begun to tackle the mystery of her family,starting with her mother's death and reaching back to the ancestry of both of her parents. WhatCodi discovers is a series of half-truths her father used to cover up his and her mother's past.These range from the cause of her mother's death (kidney failure, as he had said, but caused bypregnancies during childbirth) to both of their true names. The other members of thecommunity have an ambivalent relationship to helping Codi to discover her family's history.While Viola gives Codi a few clues, she refuses to discuss the subject at great length. Thisshifts the secret of her family's past from one held simply by her father, to one held by theentire community, paradoxically connecting Codi's past more deeply to the community as it ishidden by the community.

Parallel to, but not in direct causal relationship with, the reintegration of Codi's past with hercommunity, in the present moment Codi becomes increasingly involved with the Stitch andBitch Club's efforts to save the river. Where the men of the community are content to useofficially sanctioned methods of law suits in order to address the problem of the dam, thewomen refuse to wait the ten years that these avenues will take to pursue. Instead, they takematters into their own hands. Codi is instrumental because of her knowledge about the biologyand the chemistry involved in the pollution, and after her speech, the women organizethemselves. Their plans do not simply consist of talking or of supporting avenues traditionallyexpected of women; while officially they organize a demonstration, they discuss at length andunofficially support the violent destruction of mine property.

Whether or not Codi is a descendant of the Gracela sisters, she and Loyd are an interracialcouple. As their relationship is a wonderful one, supported by all those who know them, theidea of interracial couples in obviously supported by the novel. First, the interracial nature oftheir relationship is highlighted through Loyd's explanations of Native American culture. Theseexplanations show that Codi is an outsider to Loyd's culture, but also show both of them aseager to help her to develop an understanding of that culture. Loyd's accusation that Codi seeshim as a TV Indian also makes explicitly some of the difficulties of interracial relationships.Both people have to confront the stereotypes they may have, or may fear that the other has. AsLoyd voices those problems, he and Codi are able to overcome them: it turns out that whileCodi knows the stereotype, she is hesitant to commit to an emotional relationship with him forother reasons.

Chapters 1719Summary

Chapter 17: Peacock Ladies at the Caf Gertrude Stein.

The Stitch and Bitch Club decides to make a huge number of piatas to sell in Tucson as afundraiser for the campaign against Black Mountain. In mid- December, Codi and Emelinaaccompany the ladies to the city. The fund- raiser is a huge success, and they sell a truckload ofbirds in a single day. They decide to come back in ten days with 500 peacocks, eachaccompanied by a written piece about Grace and its plight, which they designate Codi to write.Emelina and Codi stay the weekend with Carlo in Tucson. While Codi and Carlo are up latetalking, they see the "Peacock ladies" on television. Carlo invites Codi to move to Denver or toAspen with him, and she considers it, because it would involve few risks. On the way back toGrace, Codi and Emelina visit Colossal Cave and talk about Loyd. When the guide turns off allof the lights in the cave, Codi realizes that her recurring nightmare of losing her vision and herfear of the dark are connected to a larger fear of losing any idea of where she is in the world.

Chapter 18: Ground Orientation

Working non-stop and using every scrap of blue material in the town, the Stitch and Bitch club,Codi, and a great many of others, is able to make more than 250 peacocks in ten days. Twice asmany people as the first time travel to Tucson to sell them, but Codi goes with Loyd to spendChristmas on the reservation.

On the way to the reservation, Loyd tells Codi he has given over the cockfighting business tohis friend Collie Bluestone, who moved them to another Reservation. When Codi asks how he'llfeel if they don't stay together, Loyd chides her that he didn't give up the cockfighting for herper se, but because he realized that he agreed with her objections. They talk about Loyd's twinbrother, Leander. In Pueblo tradition, twins are bad luck. The two boys, nicknamed Twice asBad, lived as if they were a single person, he says. As he tells Codi about Leander's death, healso tells her about how Jack escaped when his father drowned the rest of the litter. When theywere fifteen, Loyd and his brother moved to Whiteriver to be with their father and becomemen. Leander was killed in a fight in a bar of puncture wounds and internal hemorrhaging.

They drive down into the valley at the bottom of the Navajo tribal land, and sleep in the truckto wake up right in front of Spider Rock. Loyd explains that it's named after Spider Woman,who exists in both Pueblo and Navajo stories. As they hike around, Loyd asks Codi if she everthinks about having children. She almost tells him about their child. They talk about Loyd'sfamily. In describing his parents and aunts, he gives Codi a lesson in Native American history,explaining the difference between Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache, as well as the matrilinealsystem. Codi is impressed by Loyd's deep care for and understanding of the land and itsproducts. They drive further, still talking about their respective childhoods. Loyd's aunt Soniahas a pecan and a peach orchard in Grace that he worked on as a teenager; he will inherit thepeach orchard as soon as he has children. Codi lists for Loyd her strange job history and tellshim stories about her time in Crete, sharing more with him than she does even with Emelina

because somehow he never makes her feel like an outsider. Loyd takes her into the JemezMountains and then leads her on a hike through the snow to a natural hotspring. As they swim,Codi asks Loyd if he was ever in love with Hallie. Loyd barely remembers Hallie.

On Christmas Eve, Codi opens the last of Hallie's most recent letters. In it, Hallie admonishesCodi for thinking she is not good enough and for expecting there to be some perfect, divineanswer in the world about what she should do with her life. The letter makes Codi cry, andthink, "I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was livingit."

Chapter 19: The Bread Girl

Santa Rosalia Pueblo blends in so perfectly with the landscape that Codi doesn't notice they areapproaching it until they arrive. At Loyd's mother's house, his sister greets them, speaking withLoyd in Keresan. His sisters, aunts and his mother Inez greet Codi warmly, but she feels veryout of place. That night, more relatives join them for the enormous feast Inez and the otherwomen have prepared. Of the over twenty dishes, Codi recognizes only the lime Jell-O. Sheenjoys it all, especially the bread of which she eats so much that the family nicknames her theBread Girl.

Christmas in Santa Rosalia brings a whole day of dances. Codi and Loyd sit on the roof of hismother's house to watch. Codi asks Loyd about his father. Loyd also reveals that although ismother was aware that his father fought cocks, she did not approve and never knew Loyd hadfollowed in his father's footsteps. If his renunciation of cockfighting was for anyone, Codirealizes, it was for his mother. Codi thinks about Hallie's letter and her own inability to committo loving and settling down with anyone. She does not trust that anyone she loves will stay withher, indicating that she has been marked so deeply by the deaths of her mother and of her child.Looking around the town, Codi comments on some of the older houses that look like they arefalling apart. In a value system that does not privilege material possessions, Loyd explains, it isimportant only to build a house that can be reintegrated into the land when you are done with itand to be able to build another. Codi tries to interpret this as supporting her practice of alwaysmoving on, but Loyd qualifies, "It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thingto always go looking for it somewhere else." As they watch the dances, Loyd explains thePueblo belief system to Codi in more detail, especially in terms of humans' relationships withthe earth; she compares it to Anglo belief systems and finds the Pueblo to make much moresense. In the midst of all of the dancing, the man dressed as Koshari, the fertility kachina orfertility god, comes over to Loyd and Codi to dance and tease about an upcoming marriage forthem.

Analysis

In addition to their support of violent measures, the women of the Stitch and Bitch club makeuse of their craft making talents to save the river. The peacock piatas are a symbol of Grace.As she is recruited to write the note detailing their cause that accompanies the peacocks, Codi'srole in her community is emphasized. She utilizes precisely the skills that she learned outsideof Gracebiology, chemistry, and writing skillsfor the service of the community. In thisaction, Codi is established as the perfect prodigal daughter, who left her home, learned in the

world, and came back to protect her own family with her newly acquired knowledge. Neithercollege education nor local craftsmanship is given higher value, as they must be combined tosave Grace. The use of the peacocks to raise money also shows that the women of the Stitch andBitch Club are able to use the prejudices of the outside world, which see Grace as nothing but aquaint town in the middle of nowhere, to their own benefit. Rather than fighting against theprejudice, they simply cash in on it. Using their profits to save Grace, they demonstrate that itis in fact a vital community and one that has developed unique traditions. Also, by integratingelements such as the jackets of an encyclopedia as the materials for the piatas, the womenshow that their art is not simply folklore, but a blend of tradition and modernity.

Although Loyd and Codi share an ever-deepening relationship, they both have a primaryconnection with a sibling. However, both Loyd's twin brother Leander and Codi's sister Hallieare not present in their lives. Leander was killed in a bar brawl, and although Codi doesn't knowit yet, over Christmas Hallie is abducted by the Contras. The parallels between their two livesallow them to share on a much deeper level. Also, While Codi and Hallie tried to save a litter ofcoyote pups from a flood, Loyd rescued a half-coyote puppy from drowning at his father'shands. Loyd is the first person Codi has talked with who has experienced a loss that seems asgreat as hers. Leander died of the very same wounds that kill the birds in cockfightshemorrhaging and puncture wounds. As Codi learns of this and of Loyd's mother's disapprovalof the cockfights, she realizes that her objections were not the reason he gave up cockfighting.

Loyd is a fertile character, in large part connected to his status as a Native American. Thanks tohis understanding of Native American cosmology and to his being raised on the Reservation,Loyd has a profound understanding of how to carefully cultivate the fertile land. The land, as itis often called mother earth, is a metaphor for the mother. The man who knows how to cultivatethe earth then metaphorically knows how to bear and raise children. The primary figuredescribed at the Christmas Day dance at Santa Rosalia Pueblo is the Koshari kachina, who is afertility god. Native American religion generally then, and Loyd as the embodiment of it, aredirectly linked to fertility. In addition, Koshari dances around the house Loyd and Codi sit ontogether, blessing them as a fertile couple. Through her reconnection with her community andher association with Loyd, Codi is able to become fertile not only in terms of an ability to bearchildren, but also in terms of an ability to care for the earth and the community.

Chapters 2021Summary

Chapter 20: The Scream

On Christmas night, Doc Homer gets a phone call form Nicaragua, informing him that Halliehas been kidnapped. Doc Homer confuses the information with memories of calls from theschool when his daughters were in trouble, not even sure which daughter got in what kind oftrouble. As the woman from Nicaragua explains in more detail what has happened to Hallie andwhat is being done to try to find her, Doc Homer takes in Hallie's real and present abduction.

Chapter 21: The Tissue of Hearts

In her distress over Hallie's disappearance, Codi berates her students, trying to make themunderstand their relationship with the destructive forces of American industry. After class, justas she fears she may have gone too far in trying to explain chlorofluorocarbons and rainforestdestruction all in one day, one of the students tells Codi that it is cool that she shows them howpassionate she is about these issues.

On her return from Santa Rosalia de Pueblo, Codi begins to have dinner with Doc Homer everynight. Doc Homer is so upset by Hallie's disappearance that the little grip he still had on realityslips further away. He can still perform his routine functions, but he becomes ever more lost inhis memories. In his confusion, he begins to talk to Codi about Loyd but refers to theirrelationship of twenty years earlier. Frustrated, Codi confronts her father with his lack ofattention to her real life and also with all of her disappointment in herself. In the argument,Codi tells him about her pregnancy, and Doc Homer responds that he knew. Then Codiconfronts him about their family origins. He admits that his family is from Grace. He went tomedical school in Illinois and married Alice. But Alice's family despised Doc Homer, so theymoved back to Grace. When Codi asks why they came back to Grace of all places, Doc Homerchanges the subject.

In school the next day, Codi apologizes to her class and tells them about Hallie. Th