77 pages • 2 hours read
Rebecca RoanhorseTrail of Lightning
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The first chapter begins with the smell of a monster, mixed in with the smell of the child he stole. Maggie is at the Lukachukai Chapter House on the trail of a missing child. This house is located in a community of Diné (Navajo people), a community joined by a collective memory stretching back for all of time. These people look to Maggie and her supernatural powers for help in situations like this, but not all of them seem to think she has a good reputation. At the house, Maggie promises the lost girl’s mother that she will find her, but she cannot guarantee she will find her alive. Although Maggie does not know her exact familial relation to these people, they still expect her to feel a “kinship obligation,” or her k’é (3). The girl’s uncle negotiates payment with Maggie for her services, but some of what he offers is worthless, and Maggie offends by family by rejecting it. The girl’s family is unsure if Maggie is worth additional payment, however. Although Maggie was trained by a famous warrior named Neizghání, he is long gone, and she was only the apprentice. The girl’s brother offers to find his sister himself, but the danger of monsters is too great. The girl’s mother asks Maggie if she, as her reputation says, has clan powers (supernatural abilities), just like the Monsterslayer Neizghání. While Maggie does not have Neizghání’s supernatural lineage, she does say she can help. Reassured, the girl’s mother agrees to pay more, and Maggie sets off to find the girl.
Chapter 2 Summary
Maggie starts up a mountain on her search for the lost girl. There the beauty and calm of the forest surround her, contrasting with the killing she knows she will have to perform later. As night falls, however, Maggie becomes more on edge as she begins to smell the monster. After she sees a campfire, she loads her shotgun and approaches, seeing what looks like a man eating a little girl’s neck. Maggie has a flashback to a similar experience from her own past, although she thinks, “the monster that did that to me is dead. I killed him” (10). Maggie wishes that her old mentor Neizghání were there with her, but she must face the man alone. When she shoots the man, he does not go down, and Maggie realizes that his body is not human. Although Maggie shouts at the little girl to run, she is stolen away by the escaping monster. One of Maggie’s clan powers, Honágháahnii, activates, giving her the speed needed to chase it down. She tackles and fights the monster, and eventually she beheads it. Although Honágháahnii drains Maggie of her energy, her other clan power, K’aahanáanii, activates, and she revels in her kill. She then realizes that the little girl is still alive, but her injuries are tainted, and she will not survive long. Maggie thinks, “Neizghání once told me that evil was a sickness […] he told me I had some of that evil in me” (14). Although Maggie seems to have survived this taint so far, the little girl will not. Maggie is forced to kill the little girl out of mercy, and she then stumbles sick into the darkness.
Chapter 3 Summary
After Maggie breaks down the monster’s camp, she brings the heads of the girl and the monster back to Lukachukai. There she finds the boy who originally fetched her to help. The boy pays Maggie, but she feels guilty for not being able to save the little girl and returns some of the payment. She gives the girl’s head to the boy then leaves with the rest of her payment and the monster’s head.
Chapter 4 Summary
Maggie returning to her own trailer, where her three dogs stand guard, and she cleans off the gore. She heads off south with the monster’s head, listening to the radio limited by the Wall, a defense built by the Dinétah tribal council after the Energy Wars. Maggie arrives in Tse Bonito, bringing the monster head to her honorary Grandpa Tah, a well-liked monster expert. Tah offers her coffee, a rare treat, and asks after Neizghání. Neizghání’s abandonment is so traumatic for Maggie, however, that she will not speak on the subject. When he looks at the monster head, Tah says he does not recognize it but thinks it could come from witchcraft. According to Maggie, “Diné witches are powerful, men and women who trade their souls for dark magic” (34). Luckily, however, Tah says he might have a new partner for Maggie.
Chapter 5 Summary
Tah suggests that Maggie partner with his actual grandson Kai, a medicine man in training who wants to save the world through weather powers. He also does not deny trying to set Maggie up with a new man at the same time. Still, Maggie agrees that medicine powers will help her face a dangerous witch who can create monsters, so she agrees to meet Kai, who arrives shortly.
Chapter 6 Summary
When Kai enters in the sixth chapter, he seems far out of play to Maggie, with his fancy clothes and movie star looks. Maggie tries to convince Tah that the partnership is futile, saying “I’m sorry, Tah, but I can’t use him” (41). Eventually Tah convinces her to give Kai a shot. To Maggie’s surprise, Kai does recognize the monster, calling it a tsé naayéé’, a monster that consists of both flesh and organic material.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
These introductory chapters characterize Maggie Hoskie, the first-person narrator, as an outsider and a loner. When she first visits the Lukachukai Chapter House, she narrates, “whispered conversations hush in my wake and heads turn to stare. My reputation obviously precedes me, and not all of the looks are friendly” (2). Although the people of Lukachukai need Maggie’s help, they do not like her very much. The first character who shows any personal connection to Maggie is Neizghání, who also abandoned her. Maggie also lives alone, with only three guard dogs for company. She placed her trailer miles from the nearest highway turnoff, leaving her “with no close neighbors, which is fine by me” (20). This isolation is notable to Grandpa Tah, one person to whom Maggie is close. He tells her, “it is no good how you live. Alone, not connected. Diné way is to find connections—between yourself and your relatives, yourself and the world […] but you, your life is all separate” (30). Here Tah points out that Maggie’s self-isolation is just as much mental and emotional as physical. Just as others avoid her, Maggie avoids the company of others, with rare exception.
In these early chapters, Roanhorse also introduces the relationship between Maggie and her former mentor Neizghání, which will occupy much of the novel. When Neizghání first appears, by mention, it is when the little girl’s mother asks if Maggie really has supernatural powers like he has. Neizghání’s reputation as a hero and a distant ideal is clear from the start—he is more than human. Maggie herself seems to miss him dearly. When she first attacks the monster who kidnapped the little girl, she spares “one last hope that Neizghání will come charging up the mountain, flaming lightning sword aloft to save the day” (10). She worshipped Neizghání, although it also becomes clear that he may not have been worthy of that admiration. When he abandoned her, which is bad enough, he also left her thinking that she was like a monster, that she “had some of that evil in [her]” (14). The betrayal that Maggie feels as a result of this cruel abandonment plays into her desire to be alone.
Even when Grandpa Tah first suggests his grandson as a new partner, Maggie is reluctant to accept the help. She begrudgingly agrees to meet Kai. However, her first thought when she sees him is, “I respect Tah, I really do, but there is no way Kai’s going to help me hunt down the monsters” (40). Although Maggie’s desire for isolation predisposes her to avoid a new partner, she prejudges Kai’s ability based on his appearance. Her reluctance for help is so strong only when Kai reveals that he, unlike Tah, recognizes the tsé naayéé’ does Maggie begin to seem impressed.
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