39 pages • 1 hour read
Laura RubyBone Gap
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “May: Milk Moon”
Prologue Summary: “The People of Bone Gap”
The people of Bone Gap fondly consider Finn a spacey kid who never looks anyone in the eye. His strangeness is comparable to the other Bone Gap residents, like Charlie, who lets his chickens roost in his house, and Finn’s best friend Miguel, whose house is haunted by a ghost that pilfers from the family fridge at night. There’s also Petey, the beekeeper’s daughter, known for her acerbic attitude.
Ruby establishes the premise that people can slip through magical gaps in Bone Gap and hints at Roza’s disappearance and Finn’s potential involvement.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Finn, Roadkill”
Finn lives with his older brother, Sean, who is an emergency medical technician (EMT) and emergency room technician. Their mother, Didi, left them when Finn was 15 to pursue a relationship in Oregon with an orthodontist she met online. Finn walks through the cornfields home and hates the way the corn whispers to him. He hates the crows, too, and the way they laugh. Miguel had told him that the crows are in horror movies. Finn spots the infamous Rude boys, five boys with freckles and blond hair who live on a dairy farm and have a penchant for violence.
Though Finn has the opportunity to disappear into the corn or go the other way, he purposefully kicks a rock so the Rude boys will hear him. They turn around and tease him, but then they let him go. Finn calls after them and goads them into beating him up. The five boys leave him bloodied to a pulp on the road. He goes home and tries to bandage himself up. Then, he goes to pick up eggs from Old Charlie. Charlie’s chickens lay eggs of unexpected colors, like pink and green.
When Sean gets home, he tends to Finn’s wounds. Sean insists on calling the Rude family because Finn has been beat up twice now. Finn pushes back and wants to know why no one is looking for Roza, a 20-year-old from Poland who lived with them, helped them tend to the plants, and was kidnapped. Finn was the only one there when she was abducted, and the authorities never found anyone matching the description Finn gave them. Finn is very preoccupied with Roza’s disappearance. He misses her. He smells her absence in the Pine Sol that Sean uses to clean her room. When Finn lashes out, Sean asks why Finn isn’t looking either.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Roza, Run”
Roza is trapped in a large, luxurious house built especially for her by her kidnapper. Her kidnapper is intent on marrying her and has a portrait of her hanging up. At this point, he is not violent with her. Roza comes from a line of strong women, like her grandmother, who once shooed a bear away with a broom. Roza has lost all concept of time but has tried often to escape. She even set the curtains on fire to try and attract attention. She stands in the window and waves frantically for help at the families across the street, but no one seems to see her.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Finn, Showdown”
A goat follows Finn and Miguel around the fair. This elicits memories of when Roza showed up out of nowhere. No one knew her story, but she had a sense for animals and plants, so people took to her.
Priscilla Willis, also known as Petey, tends to the bees. The boys in town often tease her, but she is tough. Her dad walked out on her family, and she doesn’t miss him. Miguel knows Finn likes Petey. The Rude boys are mean to Petey. She tries to show off by having the bees cover her arm in a sleeve. Finn can tell she’s being stung. Even though he doesn’t say anything, she dismisses him with an insult.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Roza, Jump”
Roza watches TV and dismantles the bed frame in the children’s room, which the kidnapper intends for their future child. She tries to smash the downstairs windows, but they are unbreakable. She tries to break the upstairs window, and after a few hard blows, she breaks it. She cuts herself on the glass as she tries to reach a nearby tree. She manages to grab a branch but falls into the yard with a beast—that’s actually a large dog—who tries to rip her throat out. She passes out.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Finn, The Night Mare”
Finn and Miguel work on a fence. An overactive dog, Mustard, accompanies them as they work and chat about girls. Miguel encourages Finn to flirt with Amber Hass, a pretty girl who passes by. Finn isn’t interested and suggests Miguel pursue her. Miguel says that she wouldn’t be interested; her dad would never approve since he’s “‘just another brown kid’” (56). Finn earnestly tries to suggest that color doesn’t matter. The conversation turns to Finn’s recent involvement in fights and his brother, Sean.
Finn is clearly hurt that Sean isn’t talking to him. Finn studies for his exams for college with Calamity, his cat, and a cup of honey tea. A neighing horse interrupts him. He goes outside to check the source of the noise. A majestic black horse worth tremendous sums of money appears with bales of hay in Finn’s barn. Finn tries to ride it and gets thrown twice, then manages to ride it bareback to the Willis’ bee yard, where he finds Priscilla standing by a fire. She asks about the horse and insists Finn calls her Petey. Finn’s feelings for Petey are clear, and they talk about college. Petey brings up Roza and insists that the whole town knows how Finn feels about her. Finn gets upset. He admits that he loves Roza, but not in the way Petey thinks. He leaves.
Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The novel features magical realism and shows a world where the unusual is celebrated. For example, in Bone Gap, residents consider it a wonderful quirk that a chicken can have pink, green, and blue eggs. Ruby establishes these magical elements early on with the opening sentence: “The corn was talking to him [Finn] again” (5). Ruby intentionally leaves the interpretation of this sentence up to the reader, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality; one doesn’t know if the whispering corn is Finn’s perception, an artful description, or an actual event.
These mysterious elements are heightened by Ruby’s decision to obscure Finn’s motives early in the novel. By raising questions about Finn’s motives and past decisions, Ruby proffers Finn as a red herring for Roza’s kidnapper. This tactic is most evident in Finn’s apparent guilt over his inability to save Roza: “[He] wished he could turn back the days as easily as a farmer turning a page in an almanac. He wished that the people of Bone Gap could forgive, and that he could forget” (7). This quote makes the reader wonder why Finn would need forgiveness and what he needs to forget.
At the story’s opening, it is unclear what happened to Roza. The air of mystery surrounding Bone Gap and Finn’s guilt drives the novel, as Ruby unravels what exactly happened. Ruby heightens the intrigue with small details, like how Sean and Finn’s house smells like Pine Sol; this raises the question of why they needed to clean so thoroughly after Roza left. By slowly revealing key information and dropping clues, Ruby aims to create suspense.
Though readers may suspect Finn’s involvement in Roza’s disappearance, Ruby also portrays him as deeply sensitive and thoughtful. We see this when Petey asks him to call her by her preferred name. Despite hearing her old name, Priscilla, for years, he automatically makes the adjustment in his head. Additionally, Finn puts himself in the path of the Rude boys perhaps to punish himself for his inability to rescue Roza. Finn’s complexity contributes to the novel’s tension and is part of Ruby’s exploration of Appearance Versus Identity: how a person looks is not who they really are. Even though the people of Bone Gap see Finn as nervous and spacey, he’s really an honest and thoughtful person with face blindness.
