Animal Dreams opens with a brief chapter narrated in the third person, from the point of view of Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams and memories of the past and events of the present. Doc Homer remembers his daughters, Codi and Hallie, when they were young. Their mother is …
Summary Chapter 1: The Night of All Souls Dr. Homero Noline watches his sleeping daughters, Cosima and Halimeda. The girls perform elaborate rituals to hide their sleeping together; he does not tell them that he knows. They spent the day, the Day of the Dead, happily helping to plant flowers in the cemetery along with …
Summary Chapter 3: The Flood Doc Homer relives a memory in a dream. There is a flood. Codi and Hallie are lost. They went out to gather fruit when they knew a storm was coming, while he was in his workroom. Doc Homer simultaneously searches for his lost daughters and remembers that they have already …
Summary Chapter 5: The Semilla Besada Monday morning, Codi goes to Emelinas for breakfast. J.T. is in El Paso because the train he conducts was involved in accident, and he has to stay for an investigation. The kids get ready to go to day camp, and the women talk about the family. Emelina explains that …
Summary Chapter 7: Poison Ground Codi helps Emelina to organize her yearly “little fiesta” for Labor Day weekend. School starts the following Tuesday. Codi remembers how she applied for the job. She didnt think she had a chance because she did not even have a teaching certificate. Codi is nervous about the start of school. …
Summary Chapter 10: The Mask Doc Homer examines a pregnant teenager and thinks about Codis pregnancy. He knows that she is in her fifth or sixth month, but does not know how to tell her as much. Feeling responsible and helpless, he is unable to say or do anything. Chapter 11: A River on the …
Summary Chapter 13: Crybabies In his darkroom, Doc Homer thinks back to twenty years earlier when he changed his last name and his realization that Codi was no longer pregnant. Although he thinks explicitly about memory and tries to keep his straight, Doc wanders back and forth between past and present. He remembers as if …
Summary Chapter 15: Mistakes That night, Codi stops by Doc Homers to ask him about the grave with his name on it and the possibility of their having any relatives from the area. Confused by his lapse of memory as to who Codi is and what she is asking him, Doc Homer ignores her questions …
Summary Chapter 17: Peacock Ladies at the Café Gertrude Stein. The Stitch and Bitch Club decides to make a huge number of piñatas to sell in Tucson as a fundraiser for the campaign against Black Mountain. In mid- December, Codi and Emelina accompany the ladies to the city. The fund- raiser is a huge success, …
Summary Chapter 20: The Scream On Christmas night, Doc Homer gets a phone call form Nicaragua, informing him that Hallie has been kidnapped. Doc Homer confuses the information with memories of calls from the school when his daughters were in trouble, not even sure which daughter got in what kind of trouble. As the woman …