Nizhoni Begay is in 7th grade and discovering she can see… monsters! It's not been a problem so far, until a basketball game when she's at the top of the key and her team passes her the ball for a clutch-shot and a monster in human form and a fine suit stares her down from the sidelines. She's so startled she gets nailed in the nose by the ball. Knocks her out. Blood everywhere.
There goes her shot at being the basketball team's hero. Ok, so maybe she wouldn't have made the basket anyway, as she's not that good at basketball, but she still desperately wants to be a "heroine."
She doesn't have to wait long to get a shot at that – by battling the monster.
He's Mr. Charles, her father's boss at Landrush Oil and Gas company, and the monster wants to promote her father and bring the family out of New Mexico, away from their Navajo community and heritage, to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
That night he shows up at the house, along with two monster bodyguards. He attacks her in her own living room, saying he can't have her standing in his way, and then when her father grounds her for protecting them (rather uncharacteristically skillfully, like a Marvel hero / warrior), the monster takes the boys (her dad and younger brother, Marcus) out to eat at Pasta Palace. Her favorite!
It's not fair.
The next day, she forgets to bring the lunch her father packs for her to take to school. Then the principal calls for her and Mac over the intercom to come to the office and be picked up. But her Dad's at work, right?
She finds Mac defending himself against his school nemesis on the playground. Mac fights back by raising all the water from the school's sprinklers and pelts the bully with the jets. Wow!
Nizhoni quickly figures what an oil and gas company executive – and an evil monster, no less – would want with a kid with water powers (can anyone say: fracking?). But her? Why did he want her dead? Just like her mother?
There's a Navajo legend of the Hero Twins, and Nizhoni knows she carries three of the first clans in her, so she and her brother are descended from a Holy Person, Changing Woman. As such, it means she's got powers, but … other than seeing monsters, she has no idea what they are.
By the time she gets her father's message carved into the apple she should've taken in her school lunch, "Run!" it's too late. Her father's missing and Nizhoni, Mac and her BF, Davery, barely escape the school and Mr. Charles' clutches.
To rescue her dad, Nizhoni will have to come into her own, as a monster hunter, by getting her own weapons, and to do that, she's got to get to the House of the Sun in the Glittering World and ask – politely – for them. To find their way, the three kids have to work with many of the Holy People – starting with a talking stuffed plushie horned toad, Mr. Yazzie.
I won't give away the ending.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, know there is controversy surrounding it. You can find an essay about why the story is not recommended at American Indians in Children's Literature.
