Counting Miracles

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapter 10-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

In March 2023 Tanner Hughes locks up his late grandparents’ home in Pensacola, Florida and prepares to leave town. He’s spent the five weeks since his grandmother’s funeral packing up the house and putting it on the market. He takes one last look at it before leaving. His grandparents raised him because his mom died in childbirth and he never knew his father. He gets in his 1968 Shelby GT500KR and gets back on the road.

While driving, Tanner’s mind wanders through the events of his past. He’s a former Ranger and spent 15 years in the army. Since retiring, he’s worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and spent the past three years traveling throughout the States. He stopped traveling when his grandmother fell ill and has been in Pensacola ever since. He could stay in Florida, but his buddy Vince Thomas recently offered him a new USAID gig in Cameroon which he’s agreed to take. Before leaving, he’s going to see his friend Glen Edwards and visit Asheboro, North Carolina to seek out the name his grandmother gave him on her deathbed.

Tanner spends the next three days with Glen and his family in Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina. The first night, Tanner privately tells Glen that his grandmother gave him his biological father’s name before she died. A few days later, Glen confronts Tanner about his plans. He understands why he’d want to find his father but worries about Tanner returning to Cameroon and never settling down. He reminds Tanner he can work with him in North Carolina if he changes his mind. Afterwards, Tanner considers Glen’s suggestions, but is focused on finding his dad, Dave Johnson.

III

Tanner drives from Glen’s to Asheboro. He visits the local library and uses an “old phone book” to find all of the local Johnsons (10). He then checks into the Hampton Inn and explores the town on foot. Later, he heads to Coach’s for dinner. Amidst the crowd, Tanner notices a young man harassing a teenage girl. He doesn’t get involved because the girl gets away from the man and steps outside. When Tanner leaves, he finds the guy grabbing the girl in the parking lot and intercedes. After the young man leaves, Tanner ensures that the girl is okay before getting into his car. Suddenly he feels another car smash into him. He gets out and discovers that the girl backed into him and badly damaged his vehicle. The girl is okay and the suburban she’s driving is only scratched. However, because she’s shaken, he helps her exchange insurance information and take photos of the accident. Then he texts them to her and her mom and offers the girl a ride home. They introduce themselves and he learns her name is Casey Cooper. At the house, Tanner offers to wait in the driveway while Casey talks to her mom. Eventually her mom comes out and Tanner is immediately taken by her.

Chapter 2 Summary

Kaitlyn Cooper calls Casey numerous times. She’s frustrated with her for taking the car and ignoring her phone. Eventually she and her son Mitch Cooper eat dinner and she stands at the kitchen window, calling Casey again, and procrastinating the dishes. Casey has been moodier of late and been involved with Josh Littleton, a young man Kaitlyn doesn’t trust. Casey only went out with him once but Kaitlyn worries Casey is with him again. Kaitlyn studies Mitch playing in the other room, glad that he enjoyed his carving lesson with the neighbor Jasper and that he’s excited about visiting the zoo tomorrow. Since her divorce, Kaitlyn has been parenting alone. Mitch has been well-behaved but Casey seems more impacted by the split. Kaitlyn married George because he seemed to fit into her life plan. He was a doctor like her and gave her the family and home she wanted. Since their marriage dissolved, Kaitlyn has let go of George, but sometimes misses companionship.

Finally, Casey barges into the kitchen with a tearstained face. Kaitlyn realizes she hasn’t been drinking but is very upset.

Through tears, Casey tells Kaitlyn about the accident. She then tells her that the guy she hit drove her home. Kaitlyn scolds her for trusting a stranger, but Casey assures her Tanner is nice and says she can meet him outside.

In the drive, Kaitlyn is surprised by Tanner’s handsomeness. Tanner recounts the accident and shows her pictures on his phone. Then, per Casey’s suggestion, Kaitlyn offers Tanner a ride.

In the car, Tanner and Kaitlyn chat. Tanner tells her about his work with the army and USAID. He also admits he doesn’t have a wife, kids, or permanent residence. When they pull up near a pub, Tanner invites Kaitlyn to join him for a beer. Over drinks, they continue their conversation. Tanner tells her about his parental situation and his grandparents’ deaths. Then Katilyn talks about herself. She reveals that she’s a doctor and moved to Asheboro after marrying George. They were married for 13 years and divorced four years ago. She also talks about her relationships with her kids. When they start flirting, Kaitlyn realizes she’s attracted to Tanner but should get home. She drives him back to the hotel and they make plans to see each other again. She agrees to let Tanner join her and Mitch at the zoo the next day.

III

On the way home, Kaitlyn reflects on her time with Tanner. She hasn’t had an outing or encounter like this in years. Approaching the house, she sees Josh’s black pickup leaving and feels irritated. Inside, she confronts Casey about Josh, as Tanner filled her in on what happened at Coach’s. Casey gets upset, frustrated that Kaitlyn doesn’t trust her even though she’s a good daughter, sister, and student. She also accuses Kaitlyn of forgetting “how to be happy” (45). Kaitlyn wonders if that’s true.

Chapter 3 Summary

Jasper gives Mitch a carving lesson in the gazebo between his cabin and Mitch’s home. His dog Arlo stays with them. Jasper and Arlo have lived alone for over a decade. He still misses his late wife Audrey but enjoys his time with Mitch and likes Kaitlyn, his doctor. Jasper is a burn victim and has related complications. Kaitlyn has treated him for a while but never nags him like his previous doctors. He began teaching Mitch shortly after he and Kaitlyn met. He even gave Mitch an owl figurine he’d carved when they first met.

Jasper and Mitch talk about Mitch’s family while carving. Then Mitch reveals there was a white deer sighting in the Uwharrie forest. Jasper is shocked and hopes hunters don’t harm it. He also tells Mitch about hunting for morels in the Uwharrie.

III

Jasper walks Mitch home wearing a bandanna on his face. He likes covering his face because people are afraid of his scars. At the Coopers’, Jasper asks Kaitlyn about the white deer and she confirms she heard the report in the news.

In the morning, Jasper drinks his coffee and waits for the rain to stop, hoping to venture into the Uwharrie for morels. Then he hears a gunshot and heads out into the trees, guessing there are poachers nearby. He hunts for morels like he and Audrey used to, remembering the start of their relationship. Audrey was compassionate when Jasper’s father died. She came to his cabin and he showed her the property. That day, she found morels and cooked them for Jasper. Harvesting and eating morels became their tradition. However, everything has changed since.

Jasper continues thinking about Audrey as he and Arlo hunt morels. In school, everyone was surprised by Audrey’s interest in Jasper. However they remained close over the years and after they married Audrey gave him everything he wanted. He also did everything to make her happy.

Jasper grew up with his father in the cabin. His father taught him to love God from a young age. His father also cultivated peach trees and was an expert whittler, both skills he passed on to Jasper. His father always had a Bible verse ready when they encountered hardship. He particularly taught Jasper about miracles, sharing stories about how people’s lives were fixed after God sent them signs.

Jasper and Arlo find a dead fawn in the forest. Seeing the deer, a Bible verse comes to Jasper’s mind. He guesses a poacher shot it. Unsure what to do, he moves on.

VII

Jasper and Arlo harvest mushrooms for two more hours. Then Jasper sees three teenagers traipsing through the woods. Guessing they killed the fawn, Jasper confronts them. The boys insist they had nothing to do with it. Then Arlo bites the one boy and the boy hits Arlo with his rifle. He then threatens to kill Arlo while pointing his rifle at Jasper. Finally the boys take off. Jasper finds Arlo cowering in the bushes and looks sadly at the bucket of spilled morels the boys crushed.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The three main characters of the novel are connected by overlaps in their personal experiences. Tanner Hughes, Kaitlyn Cooper, and Jasper are from different walks of life. They have contrasting character traits, familial pasts, relational circumstances, and home and vocational lives. However, they are all on a Search for Identity and Belonging and a Journey Towards Healing. For Tanner, the end of his formal military service and the deaths of his grandparents have led him to a crossroads. In the narrative present, he’s occupying an interstice between his past and his future, and therefore trying to discern both who and where he wants to be. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is “navigating the challenges of raising a teenager” and balancing her “hours at the office” with being a single mother of two children (22). She and her ex-husband George divorced four years prior, but Kaitlyn often “miss[es] the intimacy and quiet moments associated with being a couple” (24). Not unlike Tanner, Kaitlyn is also seeking security, self-definition, and independence. Jasper’s character is similarly trying to balance the comfortability of being alone with his complicated interpersonal dynamics. In these ways, the novel shows how seemingly disconnected people might have common experiences, and how certain longings and disappointments are universal.

Chapters 1-3 introduce and establish the novel’s formal rules. The novel is organized into numerical chapters, each of which contains a series of numbered subsections. All of the chapters are narrated from the third person point of view. However, this third person narrator shifts between the three primary characters’ consciousnesses in each chapter. In Chapter 1, the narrator is limited to Tanner’s point of view, while in Chapter 2 she’s limited to Kaitlyn’s point of view, and in Chapter 3, she’s limited to Jasper’s. These formal choices enact the overlaps between Tanner’s, Kaitlyn’s, and Jasper’s storylines even before they’re fully integrated into one another’s lives. Indeed, they are all sharing the same physical space on the page, but they also each have their own private internal worlds. The narrative structure conveys these dynamics, and thus formally implies how each individual’s trauma, grief, and past might leave her feeling isolated and alone despite the connections readily at hand. Introducing these formal techniques in the opening chapters also orients the reader to the parameters of the novel and teaches her what to expect from the subsequent chapters.

The narrative toggles between the narrative past and present within each sequence of the primary characters’ storylines. In Chapter 1, the author uses Tanner’s drives from Pensacola to Pine Knolls Shore and from Pine Knolls Shore to Asheboro to induce a narrative flashback. In Chapter 2, Kaitlyn’s evening at home waiting for Casey and her drive back from Tanner’s hotel are circumstantial devices used to tug Kaitlyn’s mind into the past. In Chapter 3, Jasper’s solitary walk through the woods with his dog conjures his memories of the past. These formal techniques capture the ways in which the past is embedded within the present, and show how each character is on a Journey Towards Healing from their personal sorrow, loss, and disappointment. Furthermore, the characters’ are able to reflect when they’re alone. Their solitude inspires their introspection, which in turn grants the reader access to their psyches.

Tanner’s drives between Florida and North Carolina are symbolic of his restlessness. For most of Tanner’s life he’s “pretty much stayed on the move, if only because it [is] all he kn[ows]” (5). He moved from place to place as a child because his grandfather was in the military and adopted this life for himself after he became an Army Ranger and later when he began doing “security work with USAID” (5). Tanner’s habit of relocating time and again is a symptom of his displacement. No matter where he travels or lives he never “stop[s] feeling like a stranger” (4). He’s had a challenging childhood, which has in turn caused him to crave movement and adventure. In turn, he’s come to define himself by his peripatetic lifestyle. Even though he knows there’s merit to Glen’s concerns, he dismisses the idea of settling down in North Carolina instead of traveling to Cameroon because he doesn’t know himself in the context of a fixed home or community. The novel thus suggests that one’s fear of commitment might originate from one’s traumatic past.

Kaitlyn’s home life is symbolic of her entrapment, while Jasper’s time in the woods is symbolic of his search for meaning. For Kaitlyn, her divorce has limited her identity to that of a mother. She’s largely stuck at home when she isn’t at work, which is why she’s so delighted by her evening with Tanner. The image of her standing in the kitchen waiting for Kaitlyn illustrates how immobilized she feels by her circumstances. Meanwhile, Jasper’s extended hunt for mushrooms in the forest conveys his desperation to find the beauty in life amidst his pain and grief. He’s still trying to find the things that give his life purpose even though Audrey died years prior. Like Kaitlyn and Tanner, he is also unconsciously seeking fulfillment in order to heal from his sorrow. In these ways, Tanner, Kaitlyn, and Jasper are all connected by common facets of the human experience and condition.