Point of View

The novel is recounted from the first-person, limited point of view. Some passages (for example, Chapter 10) are presented as an extended monologue of a specific character—in a sense, these chapters are narrated by individuals other than the principle narrator of the novel, Emily, a fourteen-year-old African American girl. Emily is present in most of the scenes of the novel and is one of the novel's main protagonists. Emily, as the narrator, renders a highly subjective structure but appears to be entirely reliable. In addition to standard plot narration, Emily interprets many events, especially those events that happened before she was born. Emily appears to view the world as consisting of two places—a distant urban environment in Cleveland, Ohio, which does not appear to interest her; and the desert of California where she finds a deep-rooted connectedness to the land, the people, and...