Unlikely Animals is, from one point of view, the story of Emma’s growth and self-discovery. She begins the novel depressed, her healing touch gone, her studies abandoned, and forced to return home to the small town of her birth to watch her father, who she is unable to cure, die. Having been set apart as special since her birth, she feels superior to her hometown and its residents. She is judgmental of her father for his affair, of her mother for taking him back, and of her brother for his addiction. She is quick to morally condemn dealers such as Sid Wish, finding it easier to deal in moral absolutes and identify scapegoats than to comprehend the full complexity of the opioid crisis and individual addiction. Self-absorbed, she lacks the empathy to contact her brother and her best friend in their moments of need.

Her return to Everton alters Emma’s perspectives. She learns that her brother’s nickname for her, G.G., means not “Golden Girl” but “Giant Grouper,” referring to her sense of herself as a big fish in a small pond. As her ailing father’s guardian and a substitute teacher at the local elementary school, she learns compassion and her perspectives and goals shift.