Point of View

The story is told from the first-person point of view of Avery. Consider one of the first sentences in the novel: “It had been less than a month since I’d first stepped into the palatial Texas mansion and a week since we’d solved the mystery of why I’d been brought there” (1). Avery refers to herself with the first-person pronoun “I” indicating that she is the one who is narrating the story. Because Avery is narrating from her own point of view, the narration is biased. Avery narrates things as she interprets them based on her background. At the silent auction, for instance, she tells her reader: “This school didn’t need a new chapel any more than I needed a bronzed sculpture of a cowboy on the back of a wild, bucking bull …” (133). Avery has not yet developed the mindset of a...