Son of a Trickster

Chapters 1-6

Reading Check

1. Wee’git and Trickster (Chapter 1)

2. He speaks with a raven. (Chapter 4)

3. He finds holes and thinks they mean someone is spying on him. (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. His mother often appears to be involved in violent relationships. She interacts with her love interests in an immature way. She drinks with Jared in the basement after Baby is euthanized for heartworm. Rather than telling Jared to quit selling weed, she tells him to carry a gun. (Various chapters)

2. He denies that he sells it when other kids ask him about it, and he uses the track team’s bake sale as a cover. (Various chapters)

Chapters 7-11

Reading Check

1. He is in the hospital with a back injury. (Chapter 7)

2. He shaves his head to copy him. (Chapter 8)

3. He wants to help his father get out of debt. (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

1. The woman who broke up his parents’ marriage drunkenly tells Jared his father is in the hospital again. Phil is recovering from opioid addiction. Jared’s pregnant stepsister spends an entire night partying. (Various chapters)

2. Jared pays off his father’s debt, takes care of his stepsister, and tells his mother to get a generator. While his mother appears to be impulsive and makes rash decisions, like going to the cabin in the middle of the night, Jared attempts to hold his family together by helping them out. (Various chapters)

Chapters 12-18

Reading Check

1. Jared implies that the Jaks helped him when David was around. (Chapter 12)

2. He breaks Jared’s ribs. (Chapter 14)

3. She is angry because Jared has been helping Phil. (Chapter 18)

Short Answer

1. It is possible that because Jared is paying the house bills, his father will use the money he receives for disability to fuel the drinking and partying and possibly the opioid addiction at his house. (Various chapters)

2. He leans on people who are more stable, like the Jaks family and his Nana Sophia. He also abuses drugs and alcohol frequently to escape situations he doesn’t want to deal with. (Various chapters)

Chapters 19-23

Reading Check

1. He questions his sanity and blames it on the drugs he has taken. (Chapter 19)

2. He asks if he can live with her for the summer. (Chapter 21)

3. His mother, who is still mad at him, stares at him in the dark. (Chapter 22)

Short Answer

1. He believes she wants to passive-aggressively punish him for helping his father with his bills and therefore forces Jared to pay her bills. (Chapter 21)

2. Maggie is still missing, and with Sarah gone, there is no one keeping Jared from leaving the house and living with his grandmother. (Various chapters)

Chapters 24-28

Reading Check

1. She suspects he has magic powers and wants to meet him. (Chapter 25)

2. His inner voice tells him to go there. (Chapter 27)

3. Maggie says she was “possessed” by her mother. (Chapter 28)

Short Answer

1. Everything is calm and safe at their home. Jared is anxious about his erratic mother, who appears to have forgiven him now but has been high on something that has her picking at her face and obsessively cleaning. (Various chapters)

2. Jared makes a subtle reference to the way the drugs make his mother move quickly and behave erratically. He is also indicating that his mother has put the drugs way ahead of him on her priority list, because he is a distant “second” to whatever she is taking. (Chapter 28)

Chapters 29-32

Reading Check

1. Fireflies (Chapter 29)

2. The voice tells him he is being too loud and it is dangerous. (Chapter 30)

3. Because his mother is recovering (Chapter 32)

Short Answer

1. Sarah believes her family thinks she is either too white, not white enough, or too weird. Sarah’s belief points to the conflict between her Indigenous identity and her identity in the Canadian culture she lives in. It appears that either her family or Sarah herself has conflicting ideas about how “Native” a person should be. (Chapter 29)

2. Maggie is concerned that Jared isn’t tough enough. Because Maggie has had a difficult life, she believes that a person should be cold and unfeeling for the sake of self-preservation. (Various chapters)

Chapters 33-37

Reading Check

1. He knows Sarah would never abandon a hurt animal. (Chapter 33)

2. She tells him he is having them because Sarah is a witch. (Chapter 34)

3. He realizes that Sophia is not his biological grandmother. (Chapter 36)

Short Answer

1. The Jakses, who have been a source of stability in Jared’s life, are getting ready to move away from him. His paternal grandmother is revealed to not be his grandmother at all, and he learns that those closest to him are witches, which has turned his understanding of the world on its head. Sarah has attempted to commit suicide because she cannot cope with the concept of magic. (Various chapters)

2. Maggie and Sophia are concerned because the river otters are dangerous shape-shifting spirits. (Various chapters)

Chapters 38-40

Reading Check

1. To rehab (Chapter 38)

2. Wee’git’s sister (Chapter 39)

3. To an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting (Chapter 39)

Short Answer

1. She becomes angry with him and claims he is spitting on their traditions. She also says he is behaving like a brainwashed robot. (Chapter 40)

2. He gets a job, attends AA, does his schoolwork, and becomes isolated from his friends and family. (Various chapters)