Salvage the Bones

The plot is actually pretty slight–a motherless family with a variety of challenges (girl with boy problems, boy raising fighting pit bull with puppies, boy trying to win a scholarship to basketball camp, etc.) hunkers down in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, which then arrives. The hurricane scene is brilliant–I would have happily read more of that.

There are also echoes–made quite evident because the girl is reading mythology–of Medea's story. But it isn't really clear to me what the point of that might be. Is the girl planning to kill her child in revenge for the boy's betrayal?