The Canyon's Edge

Nora faces and overcomes her worst fears in this closing section, bringing the book’s themes—Healing From Trauma, The Keys to Survival, and Finding the Courage to Live—to completion. Symbols of walls and canyons continue to inform the theme of Healing From Trauma as Nora finally confronts the Beast. The motif of writing is powerful in these pages as she rewrites her nightmare and reframes her future.

Nora’s decision that she wants to live, wants Dad to live, and wants to live fully and joyfully rather than in fear (as she has during the past year) reveals her emotional growth. Whereas previously Nora was at times ambivalent about her life, she now looks forward to the “After After”—moving past the negative emotions that she has refused to release to maintain her protective wall. Nora now feels that her life is worth fighting for and realizes that she has “more” that she wants “to do with [her] life” (252). Nora chooses to live rather than just exist as she has since the tragedy.

In the haiku “Acceptance,” Nora summarizes Mary’s guidance that self-acceptance is critical in healing from past trauma. She at last internalizes Mary’s messages that Nora is strong, resilient, and innocent of wrongdoing. She achieves self-acceptance by releasing her feelings of guilt. Nora had felt selfish for living while others died to protect her or give her the opportunity to survive. Nora finally recognizes that hiding from the shooter wasn’t wrong. In “More,” she comments that she has “found” herself and rejects defining herself as a “victim,” asserting that she’s “more / than what one person did to [her]” (252).

Nora now believes in her own strength, and she’s empowered to face the Beast, whom she discovers isn’t who she expected to see. Because the Beast has a camouflaged exoskeleton—just as the shooter Nora saw in her nightmare had “camouflaged / legs and boots” (75)—and because Nora refers to the Beast as a male, the implication was that the shooter was the Beast Nora feared. Now, the narrative conveys that the Beast is part of Nora herself—an expression of her self-criticism and negativity. As she jumps across the slot canyon, her inner Beast attempts to undermine her newfound confidence, but she defeats it through self-belief, fulfilling the theme of The Keys to Survival by asserting her ability to survive both the external challenges of the harsh desert environment and the painful internal challenges associated with trauma and PTSD. Nora allows her walls, built from pain and fear, to crumble, and she creates a healthier boundary: a canyon. “Defeated” visually reflects Nora’s separation from the Beast. The word “canyon” is spelled vertically, in large, bold, capital letters with part of each letter whited-out from top to bottom, depicting a canyon within the word.

Nora finds new energy in her positive connections to Dad, Mom, and Danielle, who have each taught her valuable life lessons, such as survival skills, the power of writing, and baking snickerdoodles. Most importantly, they all love her. Love replaces Nora’s anger. The security of knowing Mom will “always be with [her] / in [her] head, in [her] heart, in [her] poems” gives Nora strength (276).

The motif of writing, important throughout the novel, informs the theme of Healing From Trauma. Nora empowers herself by rewriting her nightmare, understanding that she has grown and changed since her “first draft.” The “blur of brown legs” that saves Nora in her rewrite are her own legs as she jumps across the canyon (265), becoming as brave as her parents and Sofía Moreno, who sacrificed their own safety for hers. In running toward her fears rather than away, Nora finds herself becoming like the blackbird from the song her mother admired, gaining flight when she finally believes in herself. Nora truly shows that her walls are gone when she shares her poems with Dad after their ordeal. Nora is now comfortable sharing her feelings with him.

As Nora triumphs over her inner demons, she still struggles with physical survival, enduring hardships until the end. Her courageous jump across the canyon results in another significant injury. She continues to show her mental fortitude as she solves the problem of how best to attract the attention of fire-spotting planes. Although repulsed by the flare gun because guns represent the violence and whirlpool of negative emotions that she has endured, Nora has the physical and emotional courage to use the gun to shoot a flare and start the fire that saves them by alerting first responders to their location and need of rescue. Although, in previous sections, Nora hoped that someone would appear to save them and even wished for divine intervention in the form of a burning bush, she shows that she can save them on her own rather than relying on others or heavenly salvation. Nora sets the “bush” aflame herself, prompting their rescue and revealing her newfound strength and “self-efficacy.” By the novel’s end, Nora triumphantly demonstrates the theme Finding the Courage to Live: She has embraced a new outlook on life and is confident and excited for the future.