Opening Line
The novel opens with the use of metaphor. "Old medicine has a way of being remembered, of haunting land where it laid." Opening lines of novels tend to contain information that will foreshadow something important that is to come. The narrator goes on to observe that while people can forget, medicine does not. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that this story will be populated by haunted memories coming into conflict with the actual facts of the past.
Ghost Song
The plot revolves around a woman whose husband just vanishes one day and who then stumbles across a man she believes to be him. "If her heart was a song, someone smashed the bass drum and pulled all the strings off the guitar. Notes fell like hail, plinking into the soft basket of her guts." This rhapsodical symphony of metaphorical imagery describes the moment of seeing a ghost. The twist is that this ghost is very much flesh and blood that is still very much among the living.
Christianity and Canada
The man whom the wife thinks is her runaway husband is found in a tent, leading a Christian revival. She thinks "Christians were like house cats, really. Just leave out the sustenance and let them roam in a confined space where they think they’re free." This view toward Christianity is prompted by the fact that the story is set within the milieu of the Métis, an indigenous tribe found in Canada. Canadian tribes have a long, complicated, and mostly unhappy history with the arrival of Christian settlers. One either assimilates completely or develops a philosophical outlook such as that expressed here.
Waking From a Nightmare
One of the favorite tropes of Hollywood has long been than when one wakes up from a dream—usually a nightmare—they bolt upright at the waist without the need for any other part of the body to produce this movement. "He felt her terror like a weight on his chest and bolted upright, clambering to his feet." The simile sets the stage for this sudden action that, in real life, is anatomically difficult. Almost every time it is portrayed in the movies, the stimulant for waking back to consciousness is fright. "Bolting upright" effectively describes that familiar movement.
Pain
Pain is such a relative thing that it is almost meaningless by itself. The author recognizes this fact by judicious using simile and metaphor. "Her head hurt like an open wound. But that was minor compared to the operatic pain in her hand." This imagery in both cases makes the idea of pain more tangible. Almost everybody knows the pain of an open wound. Likewise, almost every recognizes that opera is grand, hyperbolic. and emotionally melodramatic. The comparison being drawn here is contextually unambiguous.
