Missing Parental Figures

A child who loses one or both parents will feel the void of a complete family unit and try to fill the emptiness. All three of the primary characters in the book — Jo, Ursa, and Gabe — are missing one or both of their parents. The three different characters have each lost their parents in different ways, ranging from the very real deaths of both of Jo’s and Ursa’s parents, to the more symbolic loss that Gabe experiences while missing his father. The feeling that each character has about being a part of an incomplete family unit motivates their decision to exist as a sort of unofficial family over the course of the novel. At one point early in the novel, Jo compares the relationship between herself and Ursa to a phenomenon in the ornithology world known as “host eggs,” where a bird...