41 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph BoydenA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Will’s PTSD gets worse after the fire, and he no longer goes to town. He runs before the sun is up with his rifle on his back. Dorothy invites him to her house for a date. They get drunk on white wine and talk about Marius. She tells him, “It doesn’t add up, Will. You got to figure this one out. Something bad is going to happen” (100). Dorothy lost a son and has an ex-husband who cheated on her. Will feels that they both have experienced enough loss to relate to one another. They connect and he confides in her, but when they kiss, he “sensed the others around me, though, the lost ones, and pulled away, trying not to offend” (103). Will heads home shortly after.
Will’s parents didn’t speak English. They weren’t raised in American culture or forced to go to public schools. His mother and her eight sisters were supposed to go to a boarding school but her parents refused, “protected them with their hunting rifles […] The government gave up on them” (103). Will is still angry that his dad didn’t fight against the government like his mother’s parents did. He is angry that the white school created this anger in him toward his family, knowing it was their intention to break indigenous culture.
Will arrives home after his date to find his half-brother Antoine sleeping in his house. Antoine doesn’t speak English and lives in the bush, but he visits his brother sometimes. They spend a quiet few days together going for walks and drinking beer. Antoine reveals that he came to see Will because he felt that he was in trouble. After learning about Marius, Antoine tells Will that “one of you must go” (106).
The morning after his brother leaves, Will goes for a run without his rifle. A car speeds by him twice. The second time, Will is hit in the leg with a baseball bat.
Annie meets up with Violet, one of Suzanne’s friends, at a nightclub in Montreal. She is hoping to get some information about Suzanne’s whereabouts. She invites Gordon to accompany her but makes him shower and wear one of her shirts. She also braids his hair.
Violet is superficial and not very talkative about Suzanne, so Annie decides to leave. Just then Annie hears a song in Cree, “a powwow song. I even recognize the group” (113). She looks at the DJ, who winks at her. He had immediately recognized her as Suzanne’s sister. When she asks what he knows, he tells her they should talk sometime and gives her his card. “Violet isn’t as simple as she comes off,” he reveals (114). Annie wants to head home but she can’t find Gordon. She freaks out when a man follows her, but it’s just Gordon.
Will’s leg is so badly hurt that he’s no longer able to run. At home in a full leg cast, he has visitors who bring him food, but he gives most of it to his bear. “I took the fire that burned in my leg and I let it fuel me, fill me so that I rarely ate anymore,” he says (117). His friends, sister, and Dorothy are all worried about him.
One afternoon Lisette comes over and reveals that she is the informant that Marius is so concerned about. “I’ve been an informant for the OPP for the last number of months,” she says (121). She started talking to them after Suzanne’s disappearance, sharing details from Suzanne’s diary. She thought it would help bring Suzanne home. Will tells her to not speak with the police again; he plans to keep Marius thinking he’s the informant and not his sister.
Annie and Gordon cook up the trout they caught that day and she gets drunk of cheap red wine. They end up making out, but Gordon ends it, writing, “I want you. Not yet. When it’s more right. When it’s right” (128). Annie is furious.
During her next visit with Will, Annie reveals that Violet her about Suzanne and Gus’s unhealthy relationship and the trouble they both got into. Gus was smoking rock, “and Suzanne, her addiction became men, if I’m to believe Violet” (129). Annie ends up staying in Montreal, becoming popular because of her missing sister. The agent gave her $4,000, so she and Gordon have enough money to survive for a while. Annie gets absorbed into club culture and starts hanging out with Violet and her friends, taking drugs, drinking, and dating Butterfoot, the DJ.
Will keeps talking to his bear, imagining she is there even when she is not. He tells the story of his second crash. He was caught in a lightning storm, flying a mother and her two young children. After they survived flying through the dangerous storm, trouble hit when part of the runway was washed out. They flipped over. The mother and children had a couple bruises and broken bones, but Will suffered internal bleeding. Will had tried to outrun the lightning storm and felt guilty for putting the family in danger. He prayed that God would spare them and take him instead: “I had the fear bad, though, that I’d made some deal with a manitou for which I had to pay more than I ever expected” (142).
Dorothy and Will spend an evening at his house and end up fighting. Dorothy tells Will he is an alcoholic; she’s been drinking more with him than she has her entire life. After they make up, Will has a hard time suppressing his desire for a drink and his paranoia that someone is outside stalking them. “Ahepik the spider crawled up my spine. I knew this spider, had not felt its legs on me in a long time. This wasn’t good. Not at all. The spider was weaving,” he says (144).
Joe and Gregor are over drinking, and they smell decay close by Will’s house. When they go to investigate, they find that someone had killed his bear in a gruesome manner. Will is devasted. After his friends leave, Will goes to collect the bear for a proper Indian funeral; “I found myself crying, chanting a death song, a song I’d not chanted since my last loss” (147). The smoke of the bear’s burning body speaks to Will, telling him what he must do next.
Annie has a memory of her time in Montreal: She’s being photographed by an Indian photographer. She is uncomfortable and awkward, but the photographer works around this to create some beautiful portraits. She worked with Suzanne’s agent to get this job. She ponders the envelope of cash he gave her, musing that it was “to buy me off. Now, I think he is ready to sell me” (151).
She visits Will in the hospital, and Eva tells her that they may have to send him to a hospital down south. Annie’s upset at the prospect of him leaving, at him not getting better. She continues recounting her stay down south, hoping that her words will help him recover.
In Montreal, Annie is dating Butterfoot, hanging out with Violet, and still living with Gordon in the hotel. One weekend, she follows Gordon and finds him in an internet café writing an email about her. It is to the Old Man in Toronto. They get into an argument when he tells her, “You are no closer to finding anything out than when you got here” (156).
Annie finds out that Butterfoot and Suzanne dated for a short time. She’s not surprised but she is angry because of her constant jealousy of her sister’s life. Butterfoot last texted with Suzanne a few months ago, when she was in New York, which is much more recent than Suzanne’s last communication with her family.
Annie has a seizure that evening in the hotel room. During it, she dreams of Suzanne. Suzanne is running across water with a “weak, thin man,” trying to escape beasts (161). Annie awakens from her seizure to find Gordon calmly beside her.
Will feels a connection not just with animal spirits but also with lost spirits. An important part of indigenous culture is the belief in the spirits of the dead. As Will tries to move on, he feels the pull of his past, of his wife’s spirit, and feels like he is being watched.
The effects of white colonization on the indigenous population are explained in a story of Will’s childhood. Boarding schools were used to strip local and indigenous people of their culture and way of life, to separate families in order to teach children a new language and culture. Fear of the other was used to justify this horrific practice. Will was one of the first in his family to be sent away to boarding school.
Annie’s time in the southern cities affects her noticeably. She is attracted by the money and glamor that comes with modeling in a big city. She starts to become like her sister, a woman she always envied. Her sense of identity shifts as she absorbs city life, hangs with Suzanne’s friends, and even dates Suzanne’s ex. Will’s experience with white European culture eroded his links to his family, and there is clear a parallel with Annie’s experience in the south.
By Joseph Boyden