Unlikely Animals

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to substance use disorder, mental illness, and suicide.

The narrators, who are revealed as the dead buried at Maple Street Cemetery, recall Emma Starling’s birth. Emma made the local news because the midwife who delivered her claimed that the baby’s touch had cured her sciatica. As she grows up, Emma’s parents realize she has the power to expedite the natural healing process. Renowned for her gift and intellect, everyone expects great things of Emma. She graduated with honors from UCLA and is starting medical school. She travels home for Thanksgiving to see her father, Clive, who is dying of a rare brain disease. Clive, a poetry professor, has been forced to retire mid-semester after hallucinating small animals in the classroom, asking his confused students “who let the cats in here?” (6).

As Emma drives into Everton, the ghosts read her thoughts and learn that things have not gone to plan in California. Emma is apprehensive about seeing her father again; she can’t forgive him for cheating on her mother. Emma adopted a large white stray dog, Moses, that she found on the roadside. The ghosts are excited about Emma’s arrival, hoping that “just this once, maybe someone would cheat death” (12).