Faces in The Moon - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The novel begins in present time. Lucie returns to her mothers house when Gracie has fallen ill. While her mother is in the hospital, Lucie stays at Gracies house, and her memories take her back to different parts of her childhood. We are offered a glimpse into a very bleak reality. Lucie is required, at the age of four, to make breakfast for Gracie and her current boyfriend, J.D. One morning while Gracie is sleeping off the drinking from the previous night, J.D. begins to verbally abuse Lucie. He mimics her; he tells her shes trash and so is her mother. All of this is being said while the four year old makes him breakfast. After J.D. sexually molests her, Gracie decides to take Lucie to the farm to stay with Lizzie. Unaware of the abuse, she only sees that J.D. is upset with Lucies lack of respect for two years, and most of the novel takes place during this time. It is here that Lucie hears more stories of her heritage. Arriving a child wise beyond her years to the pain of the world, Lucie's time at the farm allows her to learn how to be a child, to play, to pretend.

It is Lizzie, a "full-blooded" woman, who mediates the young girl's relationship to the traditional past. Lizzie not only represents an alternative to Gracie's dissolute lifestyle, but she also helps preserve the history and meaning of the lives of the women in the family by telling and retelling stories imbued with what she thinks it means to be an Indian woman. Years later, when Gracie is hospitalized, Lucie returns to Oklahoma, and with her return come the memories of childhood.