Forgiving Parents Who Caused Harm

Forgiving Parents Who Caused Harm is a recurring moral and emotional question in the novel, shaped by Kimani Cannon’s memories of her father’s violence and Duan Jeffries’s experience of his mother’s abandonment. Neither history offers an easy reconciliation: Kimani’s mother urges forgiveness as a way to move on, while Duan’s search for closure exposes a parent who feels no remorse and wants no renewed relationship. The contrast makes forgiveness a personal reckoning with injury, not a simple obligation that erases what happened.

Meaning and Family Background

The novel places questions of wisdom and understanding in view from its opening, with an epigraph from Proverbs. Within the story, however, understanding a parent’s actions does not automatically make forgiveness possible. Kimani and Duan have each lived with a parent’s choices as an ongoing part of family life, and both have reasons to question what moving forward should require.

Their histories differ in kind. Kimani’s father remained in the household but subjected her mother to physical and mental abuse. Duan’s mother left her husband and three children when Duan was twelve. One wound is tied to repeated violence and its aftermath; the other to a parent’s departure and prolonged refusal of contact. By giving both histories space, the novel presents forgiveness as a response that depends on the specific harm and on what the parent does afterward.

Kimani Cannon and the Repetition of Violence

Kimani’s account begins with the consequences of her father’s drinking and abuse for her mother and for Kimani herself. Her father knew she wanted to become a doctor. Her mother worked extra hours and saved money toward that goal, but when it was time for Kimani to attend college, her father took the savings from their bank account. The damage therefore reached beyond the violence at home: it also threatened the future Kimani had worked toward.

The abuse had a recognizable rhythm. Fairs were among her father’s favorite outings, and after taking the family, he might remain sober for a few weeks. Then the ordinary pattern returned: on Friday nights he went from work to a bar, and someone from his group eventually brought him home. Kimani recalls wishing they had taken him to a hotel instead, because bringing him home exposed her mother to another beating.

On Saturdays, Kimani bandaged her mother’s wounds while her father slept. Around noon he would wake, see the bruises, apologize, and promise that the violence would not happen again. He would resume the role of loving husband and father, and her mother would hope for the best and eventually forgive him. For Kimani, the repetition turned Fridays into a source of dread rather than anticipation of the weekend. Her memory emphasizes not one isolated outburst but a cycle in which violence, apology, and renewed hope followed one another without preventing the next attack.

Kimani’s mother later recalled that a beating during Kimani’s senior year of high school became the point at which she decided no man would ever whip her again. She told her daughter that she did not want her to grow up believing physical abuse was something a woman should tolerate. Although her mother eventually left Kimani’s father, Kimani remained angry about what she had witnessed and endured. She had not seen her father for at least five years by the time of the later conversation; their last encounter had been at her paternal grandmother’s funeral, where she suspected he was still drinking.

Duan Jeffries and the Search for Closure

Duan’s difficulty with forgiveness centers on the mother who left him, his siblings, and their father. He says he tried to forgive her and, as an adult, searched for her because he wanted closure. Nearly eighteen years had passed since she left when, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, he used his investigative skills to find her. Part of him hoped she would feel remorse or shame for not even contacting her children to ask how they were doing.

The meeting brought the opposite response. Duan found no remorse: his mother was annoyed that he had sought her out. She told him she had left for a reason, had never wanted children, did not consider herself motherly, and did not want a relationship with any of them. Duan returned to Atlanta, where his brother had already predicted that the search would end badly. His mother’s response left Duan with no reconciliation to build on, and he describes the abandonment as a wound shared by the three children and especially painful for their father.

The novel does not equate Duan’s refusal to forgive with a failure to try. He had sought his mother out in the hope that facing her would bring closure, only to discover that she rejected the relationship outright. His experience sharply contrasts with the advice Kimani later receives: forgiveness cannot be produced simply by deciding that the past should be over when the person responsible offers neither remorse nor a willingness to reconnect.

Advice, Trust, and the Limits of Forgiveness

When Kimani discusses her father with her mother, her mother acknowledges that he never hit Kimani directly, but Kimani points out that he used her mother as his punching bag. Her mother says he has improved over the years and is now involved with the church. Kimani answers with visible skepticism. In this exchange, a claim of change and religious participation does not undo the harm Kimani remembers, nor does it persuade her that forgiveness should be immediate.

Her mother nevertheless asks her to find forgiveness in her heart, presenting it as necessary for Kimani to move on. She says that she had forgiven Kimani’s father and now regards him as part of a past she will not repeat. Kimani’s mother speaks from her own attempt to continue with her life; Kimani, whose childhood included caring for her mother’s injuries and watching the cycle resume, cannot simply adopt that account as her own. The difference between them is not that one remembers the abuse and the other does not, but that they assign different meanings and consequences to forgiveness.

Duan and Kimani make these histories discussable between them. Kimani tells Duan that forgiving her father does not come easily and that her mother does not seem to understand. Duan, in turn, tells her how his search for his own mother ended. Their disclosures do not resolve either injury, but they allow each to recognize that the other carries family pain behind an outwardly capable adult life. Kimani tells Duan that she trusts him to establish the truth about Edward Villarosas, even as she is afraid to admit that she has fallen in love with him. Trust in Duan is not presented as proof that her family wounds have disappeared; it develops alongside them.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Kimani’s mother later finds herself in danger with Edward Villarosas in Las Vegas. While traveling from the airport to their hotel, she uses another woman’s phone in a fast-food restaurant restroom after her own battery dies and Edward refuses to let her use his phone. He has begun accusing her of having an affair with Bennie. Kimani tells her to call emergency services rather than return to Edward’s car. A detective informs her mother that Edward must be brought in for the murders of his two wives and that the hired killer has disclosed where the bodies are. The episode gives new weight to Kimani’s worry that her mother may again place her hope in a man who does not deserve her trust.

After her mother returns to Shreveport and rests under sedation, Kimani stays beside her and arranges an additional week off work. She hopes her mother will recognize that happiness cannot be secured by relying wholly on another person and must first come from within. The lesson applies to Kimani as well: she fears that she and Duan will soon part, and she recognizes that she must not let despair take hold. This aftermath broadens the book’s concern beyond whether a child forgives a parent. It asks how people can stop repeating painful expectations in later relationships, while leaving clear that understanding a lesson is not the same as erasing injury or guaranteeing an easy future.