50 pages • 1 hour read
Oscar HokeahCalling for a Blanket Dance
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Yolanda ‘Sissy’ Chavez (1999)”
Sissy sees Lonnie, Ever’s fiancée, in the company of one of the McCarty boys and thinks to herself that it is a “match made in Cherokee hell” (118). Her brother is away in the army and does not know what his fiancée is doing behind his back. Sissy is chagrined when their mother invites Lonnie to live with them. Sissy, in nursing school, is stretched thin between her coursework and taking care of her son Kyran. She is not happy that Lonnie has joined their family, but her mother tells her to give the girl a chance, and that Lonnie’s family had always treated her poorly.
Lonnie works at Burger King, and Sissy typically takes Kyran to play there on the weekends. She often sees Lonnie talking to men, and she wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she thinks that Lonnie’s behavior is flirtatious. She finds out from someone she knows that Lonnie is cheating on Ever while he is away. Lonnie changes jobs again, twice. At her next job, another fast-food restaurant, Sissy sees her obviously flirting with another man (the two had been dancing suggestively) and she asks Lonnie if Lonnie loves her brother. An awkward silence follows, and the two talk less after that. Ever returns from the army, and the two plan their wedding.
Lonnie Nowater comes from a troubled family. Her father cooks meth and many of her family members have been in and out of prison. Lonnie survived physical, sexual, emotional, and verbal abuse at the hands of her family and at 16 had been taken away by social services. She was only 18 when she met Ever. Because Ever is about to leave for a year-long tour of duty in South Korea, he wants to marry Lonnie during the two weeks he has at home before reporting back to the army. Sissy and Turtle want the best for Ever, and because Lonnie is so young, so inexperienced, and does not have the support of her family, they help her plan the entire wedding. The wedding is large, and Sissy is struck by Lonnie’s beauty. She still has reservations about the swirling rumors that Lonnie cheats on Ever, but she can see how much he loves her, and the two have certainly seemed deeply in love (or perhaps lust?) over the last two weeks.
After the wedding, Ever leaves for Korea and Lonnie resumes her job at McDonalds. Sissy begins to suspect that she is having an affair with her manager Jon, an older man who starts to drive her to and from work. She also begins to suspect that Lonnie is using meth. Part of her nursing training had been recognizing early signs of methamphetamine misuse and abuse in patients, and although she has no concrete proof, she thinks that Lonnie’s erratic behavior, overconfidence, and strange sleeping patterns are indicative of drug use.
Sissy finishes her nursing program and gets a job at a nursing home. She is so happy and proud of herself. She has a party at her house, and because she and her classmates are so used to long hours of studying and early mornings, most of them are tired early. She drinks too much Pepsi at the party and gets up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. She hears noises from Lonnie’s room and finds her sister-in-law injecting meth with a guy who had fallen asleep in their house after the party. (He was not a fellow student, but a friend of one of her friends who had tagged along.) She kicks Lonnie out, and later sees her with her McDonalds manager Jon. Both are rail-thin now and addicted to meth. She has moved back in with her mother. Sissy and Turtle tell Ever, who is furious, but still moves in with Lonnie. He figures out that Sissy and Turtle had been right about her.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Hank Quoetone (2003)”
Ever, now 27, takes respect for the army, veterans, and fallen soldiers seriously. At Powwows, he wrangles the kids present to make sure they don’t play too rambunctiously around the war memorials. Hank notes how seriously he takes his military service and how proud he is of America, even though others have pointed out to him how terribly the nation has treated its Indigenous population. Ever is living with Quinton’s father Hank and his two children, their mother Lonnie being too addicted to meth to take care of her kids or herself. Hank tries to help Ever as much as he can and has hired him to work security at the powwow. He encourages him to use some of his earnings to buy nice clothes that he can wear to upcoming job interviews.
At the powwow, two young kids who are not Indigenous wander into the action. Ever stops them, notices their heavy clothing, too hot for the summer heat, and gives them food and water. He helps them to call their mother: They had decided to attend the powwow in hopes that someone would give them a ride back home. Powwows are places of redemption and healing, and so Ever does his best to assist the boys. Ever finds a broken bench next to the war memorial and although he is upset about it, he ends up forgiving the culprit. Hank reflects on Ever’s commitment to the military and the rumors that abound about why he left. He’d claimed that he asked to be discharged to deal with “unresolved” family issues because of Lonnie’s meth use. He’d hoped that the military would help him, but he regrets the way that he treated Lonnie. He had been angry and had called her names. She’d gone back to her dealer, and he thinks that his days after the military were little more than “different pieces of the same puzzle” (155).
Chapter 9 Summary: “Araceli Chavez (2005)”
Araceli had been fond of her Tío Everardo, and she has little patience for her cousin Ever. She had always found him to be a difficult person to be around, but she’d given up on him entirely when he had failed to attend his father’s funeral. Although he had tried to explain to her that their relationship had been complicated, by that point she was not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d had children with multiple women, the most recent being her dear friend Jimena. She’d been dismayed when Jimena began dating Ever. She’d tried to warn her friend about her cousin’s many shortcomings (and children), but Jimena had been too in love already to listen to her. When Jimena told her that Ever planned to take her to Mexico to meet his abuelos, she called her father, hoping to put a stop to the plan. Her father had informed her that her memories of Everardo as a kindly man who’d brought her candy belied his true nature, and that to his family he had not been so kind.
By the time Ever met Jimena, he had a job working with troubled Indigenous kids. In spite of this sign of responsibility, Araceli is still wary. In Mexico, Jimena begins to feel tired all of the time and her appetite increases dramatically. Ever’s abuela is the first to realize that she is pregnant, and she and Ever decide that she will buy a pregnancy test when they return to the United States. On the way back into the country, Ever is harassed by the border patrol, who question his citizenship in spite of already having run his license and seen his military record.
Jimena is indeed pregnant, and although initially the pregnancy seems to be without incident, they eventually find out that their infant, a girl, will be born with a kind of dwarfism that will prevent her lungs from fully developing. She will not survive. Jimena visits a medicine man who Ever finds for her, and also a Catholic priest. The medicine man gives her tea to drink, and the priest provides her with a small vial of holy water. When she gives birth, the baby is born screaming, but is alive. She is placed into an incubator. They name the girl Turtle after Ever’s grandmother. Although young Turtle did survive her birth, she will not live much longer. The family gathers at the hospital.
Araceli drives to get her abuela so that she can meet Turtle at least once. The two are hassled by border guards, but they make it to the hospital before the baby dies. Araceli apologizes to Ever and acknowledges Everardo’s abuse. Ever tells her that it is okay. The baby is removed from life support.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
At this point in the text, Ever is growing up, and his Identity Development becomes a key thematic focal point. Although Ever’s troubled relationships with Lonnie and Jimena illustrate the pervasive nature of difficulty in his life, he begins to forge a healthy path for himself. Initially he does so through his military service. After he is discharged, he continues to grow through his work at powwows and participation in traditional Indigenous cultural practices, and through his burgeoning interest in working with at-risk youth. Because readers have now heard Ever’s story told from so many different perspectives, a deeper understanding of his characterization has begun to emerge, and his complexity and dynamism are fully evident.
During the chapter devoted to Lonnie Nowater and her relationship with Ever, readers learn about his first wife’s troubled past. In his blog, Hokeah writes about the complexity of identity, and about his desire to write characters who are not “model minorities.” He points out that most people have a mixture of positive and negative attributes, and that everyone makes bad decisions at some point. He is also markedly interested in the impact of trauma and inequality on Indigenous youth, and there is a way in which Lonnie’s character embodies many of the social issues faced by Indigenous young people, particularly on reservations and in majority-Indigenous communities. Lonnie is unfaithful to Ever and is not capable of parenting her children: She is not a sympathetic character. And yet, she cannot be read as a true antagonist either, because (like Ever) her childhood was scarred by forces beyond her control. Lonnie, who is addicted to meth throughout the novel, grew up in a household where addiction was rampant. Her father had even cooked meth, perhaps in their home. She was subject to sexual abuse and domestic violence, and she had been removed from her family at the age of 16. Such issues plague many Indigenous communities, and Hokeah uses Lonnie’s character to depict the damage done to Indigenous children and their families by addiction, abuse, violence, and the well-intentioned but often harmful foster care system. That such a turbulent home life produced a character as troubled as Lonnie is not surprising, and although Hokeah doesn’t expressly ask readers to sympathize with her, it should at the very least be evident that Lonnie inherited even more extensive generational trauma than Ever.
Although his relationship with Lonnie was turbulent, Ever emerges from it strong and dedicated to his children. His Identity Development remains at center stage in these chapters, and readers can see him progress through various stages of his life, learning to become more and more resilient. He joins the military as a young man, and there he learns pride, self-discipline, and self-knowledge. Rather than blaming the United States government or its military for the difficulties in Indigenous communities, he emerges from the military with the sense that he is capable of making his own fate, that the government cannot dictate his future, and that he has learned the tools to be successful.
He builds upon the strength that he learns in the military through the work that he does at powwows after he is discharged. He lives with his uncle Hank and learns more about his Indigenous heritage. It is through his work at the powwows that he first comes into contact with children who could be termed at-risk, and although his interaction with them is brief, readers can see a developing desire to help boys facing many of the same difficulties that Ever did during his youth. Ever is deeply committed to young people, and although he struggles financially at this point in the narrative, he remains dedicated to providing his children with as much stability as possible. Systemic oppression is visible within these chapters, for even though Ever works as hard as possible, it is difficult for him to make ends meet, and the idea of pulling oneself up “by the bootstraps” is shown to be a fiction, or at very best, available more so to Americans born into greater privilege than Ever and the other members of his Indigenous community.
At this point, readers have heard multiple perspectives and have learned about Ever’s experiences and characterization from many different family members. This polyvocality builds depth and complexity, and Hokeah notes that it gives a better sense of identity and characterization than hearing from only one narrator does. He argues that individuals are not always reliable narrators of their own lives, and hearing multiple sides of the same story provides a more thorough understanding of who someone is. Readers learn about Ever’s relationship with Lonnie from his sister Sissy, who is a harsher judge of Lonnie’s character than either her mother or Ever. They learn about Ever’s deep commitment to parenting from his uncle, who is more willing than Ever to speak to Ever’s strengths. It is Ever’s cousin Araceli who tells the story of his marriage to her friend Jimena, and although Araceli is initially critical of Ever, she does come to have more empathy for him as she learns more about the nature of his relationship with his father Everardo.
