Home of the American Circus

The pain Freya experiences from the lack of parental care in her childhood and the efforts she makes to care for others even in her most challenging moments highlight the human need for nurturance. As Freya settles back into life in her hometown, she realizes what a difference nurturance—or a lack of it—can make in someone’s life.

Freya often reflects on the lack of affection in her childhood. Her memories of the occasional moments she was invited to snuggle in bed with Steena and her mother make a deep impression on Freya because her customary feeling was of being pushed to the side. Freya’s longing to receive attention and approval from Steena continues into young adulthood as she cherishes the brief months when Steena, to impress Charlie, treated Freya as a real sister. Freya realizes as an adult how badly she wished Step would stand up for her, either intervening in her mother’s verbal abuse or demanding that Charlie atone for raping Freya. Freya was even first drawn to Charlie because of the sense of inclusion and approval she initially felt around him, a trust that he horrifically betrayed.

Freya finds purpose and healing in offering nurturance to others. In the Prologue, her love and affection for Aubrey is established upfront. The need to care for Aubrey forms the arc of her character growth and maturity as she realizes Aubrey needs a stable home, protection from the bullies at school, and some chance at joy in her childhood. Freya also shows an impulse for care in the way she feels about the growing things she finds near the house. She replants the saplings growing in the house’s gutters because she wants to give them a chance at life, and she regrets the loss of the trees that are damaged in the ice storm. Her actions show that she needs to care for others to feel at peace with herself.

Other characters demonstrate nurturing behaviors that provide help and comfort for others. Jam shows unconditional care for Freya and, by extension, Aubrey, whom he helps because she is Freya’s niece. Eddie’s work as an EMT and his care for his mother present the impulse to provide nurturance for other living things as a fundamental aspect of a healthy personality. Aubrey’s need to give a better home to Lenny Juice, the rat, shows how even those who have been deprived of nurturance themselves can have room in their hearts to feel compassion for other beings.

Thus, throughout the novel, a lack of nurturance harms individuals, while giving and receiving nurturance allows healing, community, and a sense of purpose to flourish. In sharing and accepting nurturance, Freya realizes that she is at last at peace with who she is and where she is in her life.