Summary

15 – The author describes taking a book by psychoanalyst Carl Jung with her on her trip to be with Amaia in the Texas desert, and writes that for her, she and Jung went through similar experiences – looking deeply into the darkest and brightest places in the self in order to come to understand that self, and perhaps some larger truths of being alive. The author says that in arranging for time with Amaia, she seemed to be about to do the same thing: “preparing to face something that I knew was going to hurt” (174).

16 – The author writes of being told by her mother the nature of her descendancy from the Wampanoag tribe; of discovering how that tribe had almost been wiped out; and how she somehow felt connected to the tribe and its history – specifically, the idea arising from the...