Family and Friendship
Elatsoe follows 17-year-old Ellie, a Lipan Apache girl, and her friends and family in the aftermath of her cousin Trevor’s brutal murder. As Ellie and her friends work to uncover the mystery of how Trevor was murdered, the novel highlights the power of family and friendship to offer support, comfort, and a different perspective in times of need. Ellie knows full well that in order to figure out how Dr. Allerton, a…
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Justice
Seventeen-year-old Ellie learns in the novel’s first few chapters who murdered her cousin Trevor: Dr. Abe Allerton of Willowbee, Texas. Her goal, then, becomes figuring out both how Dr. Allerton killed Trevor and how to get justice for her cousin—and what justice even looks like in this context. Ellie recognizes that since Trevor was a working-class Native American and his murderer is a wealthy and powerful white doctor who killed Trevor using magic…
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Cultural Identity and Coming of Age
Ellie and her family are members of the Lipan Apache tribe. Within the fantastical world of the novel, the Lipan—and Ellie’s family in particular—are known for their magical knowledge: the knowledge of how to raise deceased animals as ghostly companions has been passed from eldest daughter to eldest daughter for generations. Much of Ellie’s maturation occurs as she becomes more knowledgeable about this ability, her family history, and even her entire tribe’s history, suggesting that…
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Colonialism and Monsters
Elatsoe takes place in a world similar to the real world, but one where monsters, vampires, ghosts, and magic are a part of everyday life. Despite its fantastical elements, however, most aspects of American history—such as the fact that Europeans colonized the Americas and that Native Americans were killed and displaced as part of this process—still happened. The novel’s fantastical elements, and particularly its portrayal of monsters, allows it to portray colonialism and bigotry as…
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Death, Grief, and Healing
Elatsoe begins with 17-year-old Ellie’s cousin, Trevor, visiting her in a dream to share that Dr. Allerton has murdered him and to ask Ellie to care for his family. Trevor’s murder shakes Ellie’s family to its core, and it particularly shakes Ellie and Trevor’s young widow, Lenore, both of whom haven’t experienced this level of grief or tragedy before. Specifically, neither character has known someone who died as young as Trevor did…
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Storytelling
Storytelling plays an important role in Elatsoe on several levels. The novel is peppered with stories of Ellie’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, or Six-Great, and the many heroic feats she accomplished during her life—and ultimately, how she died. Additionally, Ellie and her mom, Vivian, tell several classic Greek myths and legends, like those of Icarus and of Archimedes. The point of these stories, Vivian and Ellie discuss at one point, isn’t just to entertain or…
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