There is always a time when people need to feel at home. In the novel Animal Dreams, the author Barbara Kingsolver told the story of Codi and her trip back to Grace, Arizona. Codi returns to her hometown where there's nothing to fulfill her restless lifestyle. When she arrived in Grace, she didn't feel at home, she lacked courage and she didn't feel loved. .
"I"d like to find a place that feels like it wants to take me in" (183). This was Codi's attitude towards Grace and every other town she lived in. The fact that Codi grew up motherless and with an overprotective father didn't help her fit in. Her father continually told Codi and Hallie, her sister, that they weren't from Grace but rather from Illinois. One of the people that Codi got to know well is Loyd Peregrina. He was one of Codi's high school flings and throughout the novel he helped her recognize that she was wanted and needed in Grace. When Codi gets to Grace, things changed and she realized that she did belong in Grace after all.
In the past, Codi was forced to wear orthopedic shoes as a child. Doc Homer, her father, was the town doctor and insisted that his daughters would have perfect feet. For this reason, Hallie and Codi had different shoes from every other child as they grew up. Not only did the shoes make the girls feel out of place but they were both unusually tall. Codi reminisced, "People here would remember our unreasonable height in seventh grade" (13). Codi was content in believing that the only thing people noticed about her and Hallie was their shoes and height. She dwelled on this and forced herself to believe that they were the oddballs throughout their childhood. Near the end of the novel, Codi finally realized that she was wrong. When Hallie died, Codi asked the all the townspeople to bring something that reminded them of her to the funeral. As Codi's eyes moved over all of the toys and memories she noticed, "each one of these fifty mothers who"d been standing at the edges of my childhood, ready to make whatever contribution was needed at the time" (328).
