Race to the Sun

The lack of parental authority and oversight in Nizhoni’s life over the course of Roanhorse’s novel forces her to learn self-sufficiency. Parental absence forms an established trope in children’s adventure stories, as children with secure and safe homes with attentive and loving parents are rarely presented with the necessity or opportunity to leave home on protracted adventures. For Nizhoni and Mac, this absence manifests in two ways: first in the presumed abandonment of their mother (which they later discover is a result of being waylaid on her quest to fight monsters along the Rainbow Road) and second in the emotional absence of their father, who is consumed with his work.

Roanhorse presents both of these types of abandonment as having painful, though different, effects on the Begay children. While their mother’s disappearance causes emotional wounds that lead the children to feel unimportant, their father’s neglect leaves them vulnerable to danger and subject to physical harm. When both Nizhoni and Mac are injured at school in the opening chapters, for example, their father is so “into his phone call about boring surveyor stuff” that he fails to notice that Nizhoni is covered in blood or that Mac has a black eye (33). He only pays attention to these injuries when they threaten to make him look bad in front of his new boss. Further, when Mr. Charles threatens Nizhoni’s life with a knife, her dad disbelieves her and leaves her at home to be watched by Ms. Bird, one of Mr. Charles’s monstrous bodyguards. Their dad’s preoccupation with his work, though nominally about financially supporting his family, leads him to ignore and endanger his children. Only after her father actually disappears (as opposed to only being emotionally absent) can Nizhoni embark on her quest and fulfill her destiny.

The novel’s resolution neither wholly blames the parents for their absence nor absolves them for the ways that they have failed their children. When Nizhoni rescues her mom and the other “lost ones,” she comments, “I just wish that sometimes they would have loved their kids a little more and fought monsters a little less. Is that selfish?” (274). In giving voice and space to Nizhoni’s feelings, Roanhorse validates them even as she allows for nuance through Bethany’s perspective. When Bethany attempts to defend her actions, claiming that she tried to “save [Nizhoni] from all of this” (274), Nizhoni does not leap to forgive. She asks, “What if ‘sorry’ isn’t good enough?” (275). In presenting the perspectives of both mother and daughter, Roanhorse suggests that noble motivations for a decision don’t preclude the consequences of one’s choices. Bethany’s protective intentions don’t invalidate her daughter’s feelings. Though Mac urges Nizhoni to take a “chill pill,” the novel presents his desire to push back against his sister’s anger as coming from a place of insecurity, rather than true forgiveness; he wants her to forget and act as though none of their past trauma (arising from their absent mom) ever happened. The novel leaves Bethany’s promise to earn forgiveness, a trajectory that inherently extends to beyond the novel’s scope, open ended—an optimistic course but not a definite one.

The return of Nizhoni’s father highlights Nizhoni’s complicated relationship with him. Though Nizhoni spends much of the novel missing her father, focusing on the ways that he supported her rather than the ways he let her down, his return does not acknowledge the emotional absence his children suffered even while he was physically present in their lives. Though he apologizes for leaving them and claims that he “should have done more [… should have] believed Nizhoni” (301), the narrative quickly subsumes his apology in his surprise to find his wife alive. He embraces her, his forgiveness instant—a reunion Roanhorse leaves uninterrogated.