The following version of the book was used to create this guide: Bowling, Dusti. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. Sterling, 2017.

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus is divided into 39 untitled chapters that vary in length to alter the tone of the plotline. Aven, a 13-year-old girl born without arms, is the novel’s first person narrator.

Aven has become acclimated to her life in Kansas when her dad announces that he is taking a new job at Stagecoach Pass, a theme park in Arizona. Aven struggles to adapt to the summer heat of the southwest, and is nervous about fitting in at a new school, where the children are unaccustomed to her disability. She does not feel accepted and this causes her to eat her lunch alone.

She struggles to make friends until she meets Connor, a boy her age who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome. They form a friendship through their shared bonds of not fitting in, and together they begin to solve the mystery of the elusive Joe Cavanaugh. Joe is the owner of Stagecoach Pass, but the other employees claim that no one will ever meet him.

The children believe that someone who works at the theme park likely murdered the Cavanaugh family. They slowly collect clues to his whereabouts, and discover that back in 1973, there was another girl named Aven who lived at Stagecoach Pass.

Connor’s father did not accept him with his disability and he struggles to believe in himself. This is a trait shared with Connor and Aven’s mutual friend, Zion. But Aven maintains a good sense of humor about life and believes that she can be anything she wants to be. This belief is reinforced by her parent’s faith in her.

Her self-confidence is an inspiration to everyone who meets her, and she passes this trait on to Zion and Connor. Together, the three friends brave the discrimination of a cruel world, bent on isolating anyone who is different.

When Connor enters a state of depression about his inability to be like everyone else, he temporarily drags Aven into his despair. But through the support of her family and the help of her self-therapeutic ritual of blogging, she comes to realize that she does not have to be defined by her lack of arms.

Her father helps her see that she does not have to be like everyone else, and that what she really desires is to be fully herself. She tries out for the soccer team and finds that her dad was correct. She makes a new group of friends and finds a sense of belonging bigger than her friendships with Zion and Connor.

Her dad gives her a key that opens the desk that Aven has long believed holds the secrets to the mystery about Joe Cavanaugh. In the desk, she finds a photograph of two women, and she recognizes one of them as Josephine, the old lady in the restaurant.

She confronts Josephine, who reveals to her that she is her blood grandmother and goes by the pseudonym Joe Cavanaugh. Aven’s mother died shortly after giving birth to her and Josephine put her up for adoption because she was not able to take care of her. She has felt guilty about this, and made it a point to keep tabs on Aven and her adopted family.

Josephine hired Aven’s dad to manage the theme park so she could be closer to Aven. Aven does not think she can ever forgive her grandmother for abandoning her. Josephine tells her that she is leaving Stagecoach Pass to Aven’s ownership when she retires.

In the conclusion of the novel, Aven plays her guitar on stage in front of a large audience, demonstrating her ability to overcome her greatest fears and fully express herself. She finds true friendship in Connor, Zion, and the girls of the soccer team. When the novel closes, she has resolved her insecurities from the beginning of the story and she is excited about her first year of high-school.