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The Arc and the Sediment, by Christine Allen-Yazzie

by Kathleen Maher on June 02, 2007

Ms. Allen-Yazzie’s debut novel, The Arc and the Sediment, gives us a woman’s answer to the classic men on the road going nowhere novel. Her protagonist and narrator, Gretta, struggles mightily with the same turbulent hallmarks of American literature’s bad boys: taking to the road, driving fast and drunk, and searching for the elusive center of his (her) being.

But as a mother, Gretta is never going to be as independent as a man. Her desires will always circle back to her children. She hesitates and worries as she drives an old Chevy truck in search of her children’s father, an American Indian (or Native American—the political preference being in flux). Her babies cry and call for her, long for her and she for them even as she indulges in pints of Gilbey’s gin, or roadside, midnight sex.

In her failing truck, Gretta’s trip, from Ponticello, Idaho to Fort Defiance, Arizona, should take a little more than twelve hours. There she plans to ask her children’s father, Lance Bitsilly, a Navaho, if he will return with her to resurrect their marriage and family. If Lance would rejoin her and they were to drive directly home—or even if she were to learn she must drive back alone—the trip—and her babysitter—should require a day and a night and perhaps a part of the following day.

But Gretta finds it impossible to drive directly to the reservation. She arrives first in Moab, Utah prepared to fill her prescription for Dilantin. The drug, however, haunts her almost as much as her neurological seizures the drug is supposed to control. Gretta admits she doesn’t take it reliably because it doesn’t work reliably. And of course she’s aware it can’t work reliably if she doesn’t take it reliably.

Thus, her one and a half day trip expands to a week on the road, which always seems to bear a sign indicating that Moab, Utah lies five miles ahead.

The novel’s structure lends itself to the concentric circles formed by one responsibility rippling out after another. Told in thirty-eight brief chapters, the story traces huge, elegant arcs through Gretta’s past and present. Her hope for the future waxes and wanes above the changing horizon toward which she drives. She is driving to Lance, hoping he still loves her, while not entirely sure how much she still loves him. Her deepest desires are double curves, not the linear, single-minded quest of a man.

For all its lush detail, its circular inclusion of past and present, “The Arc and the Sediment” gives the reader a lucid portrayal of a tormented and lovelorn heroine.  Her wit and determination, her struggles and motherly love appear here as fearless, sensitive, and unflinchingly honest. Allen-Yazzi’s vivid, feminine Gretta may suffer terrible confusion, but Allen-Yazzi’s readers never do.

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