46 pages • 1 hour read
Kate AllenThe Line Tender
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Shark”
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the death of a parent and the death of a child.
In July 1996, 12-year-old Lucy Everhart and Fred Kelly gather $1.45 from the pay phone coin returns in their hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts, to buy candy from the local Country Store. At the store, they overhear two tourists talking about a shark that’s just been caught. Lucy and Fred race down to the wharf to see the shark, and Fred comments that Lucy’s mother would’ve known if it were a great white or not, alluding to the fact that Lucy’s mother is dead.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Expert”
The great white shark reminds Lucy of her mother, who was a shark expert and marine biologist for the state of Massachusetts. Fred wants to investigate the shark for the field guide he and Lucy are working on, an extra credit project for their science class. Fred oversees the information for the guide while Lucy sketches the creatures they find. The shark has been strung up on the wharf by the fisherman who caught it, Sookie, an old friend of Lucy’s family and a “fourth-generation Rockport fisherman” (12). Fred tells Sookie that he should call a biologist, but Sookie says that Lucy’s mother was the only biologist he knew. He says that if she were alive, he “would’ve called her from the boat” (13). Sookie goes off to handle the shark, and Lucy spots her father, Tom, approaching the scene. Lucy’s father is a photographer, scuba diver, and detective for the Rockport police.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Scuba Diver”
Lucy and Fred go back to Lucy’s house with her father, and Lucy worries about her father’s safety when he dives if there are great white sharks swimming close to shore. Fred suggests that Tom talk to Sookie about calling a biologist, but Tom doesn’t think Sookie will listen to him. Lucy notices that her father seems upset by the incident with the shark. Later, Fred and Lucy plan to watch the Red Sox game, and Tom leaves the house to go scuba diving. Lucy worries that it’s dangerous for her father, but she doesn’t stop him. Fred’s mother, Maggie, calls him home from across the street.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Empty House”
Left home alone, Lucy goes to the kitchen to try and scrounge up some dinner. However, there isn’t anything for her in the refrigerator, and she doesn’t know how to cook the chicken her father was defrosting. She contemplates trying one of her mother’s old recipes, but they all seem too complicated. She turns on the TV to watch the baseball game but instead stumbles on a news report about Sookie and the shark. She calls Fred, excited to see someone she knows on TV, but is shocked when the news report includes old footage of her mother explaining the habits of great white sharks. Lucy has never seen the footage before; she’s hit with grief over her mother, who died five years earlier. Fred hears Lucy’s shaky breathing on the phone, but Lucy shrugs off his offer to talk.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Storm”
Later that night, inspired by seeing footage of her mother on TV, Lucy decides she wants to go sketch the shark at the wharf. She calls Fred, and the two of them go down to the wharf to see the shark again. A police officer guarding the shark lets them come close enough for Lucy to sketch it and offers to drive them home when she’s done. Lucy and Fred talk about how Lucy’s mother wasn’t afraid to swim with sharks. Fred invites Lucy to come over to his house, knowing she’s home alone while her father is scuba diving, but Lucy declines. The police officer drops her off at her empty house as a storm begins and it starts to rain.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Emergency Contacts”
Lucy tries to call Sookie to tell him to call a biologist before the shark is disposed of, but he doesn’t pick up the phone. Sookie hasn’t spent time around Lucy and Tom since her mother, Helen, passed away. He was best friends with both of Lucy’s parents when they were younger, and Sookie was like an uncle to Lucy when she was little.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Isopods”
The next morning, Lucy throws rocks at Fred’s window to wake him up. She wants to go talk to Sookie. Fred brings breakfast for Lucy since her father got home late the previous night and left early for work. While Lucy eats, the two talk to their neighbor Mr. Patterson, a widower who spends his time listening to the radio and the police scanner. Mr. Patterson reveals that the shark is missing from the wharf. Then, Lucy and Fred go down to the wharf, where Sookie is talking to the police about the missing shark. Fred guesses that the shark probably fell back into the water because of the storm and thinks it has probably already been eaten by scavengers called isopods.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
In these first chapters, the author establishes the key symbols and relationships that will develop over the course of the novel. Chapter 1 opens with Lucy and Fred buying candy from the convenience store, which demonstrates their friendship as well as how they are on the brink of adolescence. Lucy notes, “Sometimes I wondered if almost thirteen was too old to be cleaning out pay phones for candy” (2), inviting the reader to consider that Lucy still takes pleasure in child-like activities while being aware that she is growing older.
Lucy and Fred’s relationship develops the theme of Adolescence and First Love, which will trace how Lucy and Fred and their relationship with one another will change. At the beginning of the novel, they are best friends, and soon, they will come to realize that they are attracted to each other. First love is a common theme in coming-of-age novels like this one. The adolescent characters are coming to accept that they are leaving childhood behind and entering adulthood, and experiencing their first crush or kiss is a rite of passage in growing up.
Another important relationship introduced here is between Lucy and her mother, Helen, though Lucy’s mother doesn’t appear in person. Instead, she first appears as a memory that Lucy and Fred share. When they first see the shark, both of them immediately remember Helen, who was a marine biologist who studied sharks. She died five years ago of a brain aneurysm. By connecting the dead shark with the memory of Lucy’s mother, the shark becomes a symbol for death and the unknown. Sookie and Lucy’s father, Tom, are both introduced in the story in the context of the shark, and they react to it emotionally since it reminds them of Helen, too. This indicates that Lucy’s mother’s death is something that all these characters struggle with.
The shark symbol and the relationships between these grieving characters introduce the theme of The Role of Community in Coping With Grief. Lucy, Fred, Sookie, and Tom have all been affected by Lucy’s mother’s death. However, at the start of the novel, they don’t grieve the loss together or mention their sorrow to one another; instead, it pushes them further apart. Lucy and Tom are upset by the shark sighting, but they both blame their red faces on the heat; this detail shows how similar Lucy and her father are and how they both choose to deny their feelings rather than express them. Tom uses his work to distract from his feelings, “always moving like a shark, swimming in order to breathe” (26). He stays busy to avoid thinking about his pain. This characterization foreshadows how Lucy’s father won’t be able to overcome his grief until an injury requires him to stay home from work and away from diving. Without work to distract him, he will allow his feelings to resurface.
The author uses the natural world—the storm, the shark, the ocean—to represent how the unknown, specifically death, is a fearful force for Lucy in the opening section of the novel. Lucy’s first impression of the shark is its “gnarly teeth, serrated and sticking out at different angles” (5). When she returns to sketch the shark, she imagines it saying, “Mind if I eat your dad?” (37). After the storm washes the shark’s body into the ocean, Lucy describes the ocean floor as a place to bury a body. In each example, Lucy associates natural elements with death, showing how she feels disconnected from nature and fears it. Lucy’s initial resistance to nature sets up the theme of The Interconnectedness of Humans and Nature.
