Content warning: This section of the guide discusses domestic violence and sexual assault.

Omishto, a 16-year-old member of the dwindling Taiga tribe in Florida, is the novel’s narrator. Her name means “One Who Watches” (4), and fittingly, she is a sharp and observant girl. She is the sole witness to the central event of the novel in which Aunt Ama, who is like a second mother to her, kills an endangered panther, an animal believed to be the sacred ancestor of their tribe. The central arc of the narrative is Omishto’s coming-of-age story as she is called to bear witness to this event in both Western and tribal courts, faces Ama’s eventual banishment, and grapples with her sense of cultural identity, eventually forsaking the Western world and choosing a traditional life on her tribal land.

Omishto’s perspective drives the tension of the story because, until the novel’s conclusion, she negotiates Cultural Identity as a Balance of Assimilation and Preservation. She lives with her Americanized mother, sister and stepfather, but unlike them, is drawn to Taiga ways and stories rather than American. Partially, this is not a free choice but a matter of survival. She is a vulnerable young female preyed upon by her lecherous stepfather, and so she takes refuge both at Aunt Ama’s house and sleeping in her boat at night on the water.