The Insufficiency of Maps

the long version

Alice is five when she and her homeless, mentally ill mother, Amalie, arrive at Papi's trailer in an Arizona Indian reservation to live. Papi may or may not be Alice's father, but he adores Amalie (who is of Kwytz'an descent) and has been waiting for her to return after years of hospitalization-related absence. Alice briefly attends the local reservation school before her mother's visions and paranoia prompt them to hitchhike back to Amalie's father's home in California.