Esch's Coming of Age

In Salvage the Bones, Esch's position as the narrator places her perfectly for us to understand her and  her growth through the novel as the most important theme. We see her from the beginning struggling with the notion of womanhood an femininity in a world with no real female role model. This starting point is pivotal to understanding where she is left at the end, having learned a lesson through trial and error rather than through the advice of more wise women who might know better. Because she was never taught the things a mother teaches her daughter, like how to compose yourself around boys who might do what these boys did to Esch, (using her for sex) she is left at the end with one of these very same disrespectful boys continuing to disrespect her. Ignoring how titular and heart breaking this epiphany proved to be, this is a lesson she needed to learn; that people are not always the way you want them to be, that people you love will hurt you, and that giving someone all your love does not ensure that they will return it.