62 pages • 2 hours read
Marian HaleDark Water Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A 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 24-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
On Friday morning, Papa comes home. Seth is torn between resentment and relief; he didn’t see his father for almost two weeks. When Papa sees Seth, he pulls him close and hugs him. It helps to relieve some of the bitterness Seth was carrying around with him. Mama is very excited to see Papa, too. They embrace. The bridge was repaired, and supplies are arriving. Papa is exhausted and drained; they feed him, then he falls asleep on the parlor floor. Later, Seth spots his father sitting outside, watching him work. Seth worries Papa will judge his work poorly, but he soon gets back into the rhythm of working with Josiah and is proud of what he does.
Something about Papa changed. Seth thinks the “tough shell” he always had has cracked, maybe because of his sorrow, or because of losing everything he had, but there is a softness to him now that Seth values (196). He knows he’ll have to tell his father his decision about not going to college soon. Josiah and Seth finish Ezra’s new house. Papa inspects it, but Seth does not let his fear of failure or judgment bring him down this time. He knows his work is “clean and precise” because he is a true carpenter (197).
Chapter 25 Summary
After supper on Saturday evening, they find a hen roosting in the tree. They catch it and debate whether to keep it for eggs or butcher it for dinner the next night. They decide to eat it for dinner the next day. Ezra and Josiah move into their new house with their few belongings. Ella Rose watches, looking angry. Seth asks her what’s wrong; she says nothing but then admits she’s jealous Seth still has a family and a home. Seth hugs her and tells her she has the same—his family loves her now too, and so does he. This makes her feel better.
On Sunday morning, Henry and Spencer visit. Everyone takes the day off work. Aunt Julia insists Henry, Ella Rose, and Seth do something fun together. Ella Rose seems very happy; Seth can’t stop looking at her. He worries she might start to see him as a brother. The three of them are able to forget the storm together for a little while.
Chapter 26 Summary
As October arrives, some things start to feel more normal. The sound of work is constant as crews remove the debris and expose “usable lumber, sinks, commodes, and always, more dead souls” (203). The family repairs Aunt Julia’s house, then starts helping work crews remove debris from the neighborhood. Seth knows his working days are coming to an end as the public schools will reopen soon. Seth knows he could quit and get work, but he promised Papa he would finish high school, so he plans to attend. Ella Rose announces she will not go back to private school but will attend public school with Seth. Papa looks like he wants to tell her to consider what her father would have wanted, but he doesn’t say anything. Aunt Julia is worried Ella Rose will leave—she’s come to depend on the girl’s help with the younger children—but Ella Rose assures she will stay as long as she’s welcome. Seth sees the next year open up before him and doesn’t feel so bad about going back to school.
Chapter 27 Summary
The start of school is solemn. Students trade information about missing or dead friends. Not much clothing survived the storm, so the students are often barefoot and wearing tattered, ill-fitting clothing they salvaged from around the city. Many desks are empty, and they soon learn more than 25% of school-aged children are missing or dead. After a few weeks, school returns more to normal. Laughter can be heard. Seth thinks this is because of the distraction of school but also because the fires finally stopped and the air is clean again. Fresh food fills the markets again. Life starts going back to something like normal. Thanksgiving and Christmas come around. The city celebrates, but there is grief in every heart, too. Aunt Julia still suffers in her grief, but Ella Rose seems to be making peace with hers, and the younger boys are doing alright, too.
Seth’s birthday is just before the end of the year, but he asks Mama not to make a fuss. The night of his birthday, Ella Rose takes him out for a surprise. She takes him to the Garten Verein and gives him a present: her father’s gold rose tiepin. She tells Seth her father always said the rose reminded him of her, and that’s why she wants Seth to have it. Seth goes to bed that night knowing Ella Rose has feelings for him, too.
Chapter 28 Summary
On New Year’s Eve, Seth decides he will tell his father the next day that he will not be attending college. He tells Mama about this plan, but she doesn’t seem surprised or worried. Seth wonders again about the message Papa sent for Mama when he went to work on the bridge. The other kids come downstairs. Kate squirms and says she needs the outhouse; Seth prepares himself to take her, but Mama asks Matt to do it instead. Matt is horrified to realize the burden passed to him, but he does it.
That night, everyone goes down to the beach. There are fireworks over the water. The crowd sings “auld Lang Syne” together and then stands in silence, embracing each other. Seth thinks: “the truer purpose for our gathering rolled toward us as sure as the waves that fell upon the beach. It was time for good-byes, time to let loose the storm’s bindings” (215). Seth doesn’t think he’ll ever be “free of the ghosts,” which still stay with him (215). Seth can’t sleep that night, so he goes back to the beach and lets himself feel all of the intense feelings he was suppressing for months. He grieves for those he knew and lost, prays for the dead he came upon on his own trip home, and whispers Sarah Louise’s name into the wind, hoping it will reach every ear in Galveston. He feels intensely, then tries to put the pain behind him. As he walks home, he sees all the new construction and knows soon he will be out there, working.
Chapter 29 Summary
Seth awakens New Year’s Day from another dream about Zach. He feels confident in himself and who he has become. He asks Papa to Uncle Nate’s study and tells him: “There will be no college for me, Papa […]. I’m a carpenter, and I can be nothing else” (219). Papa calls for Aunt Julia instead of responding. They sit in silence, and then Aunt Julia returns with everyone. Aunt Julia and Ella Rose carry something draped in cloth into the room. Papa says they planned to give him the gift after high school graduation; he pulls away the cloth, revealing a beautiful sign that says, “Braeden and Son, Building Contractors,” letting Seth know they will be working together as carpenters.
The women all have tears in their eyes. Seth realizes Papa planned this since he chose to work on the rail bridge: “He’d done it for me, and all this time, Mama had never said a word. She just stood back and let me learn how to walk in Papa’s shoes” (221). Everyone is happy, but it’s Papa’s smile that really touches Seth. He still has questions for his father, but in Papa’s face he sees the promise of answers.
Chapters 24-29 Analysis
The conclusion of the novel sees the family reunited and whole, other than Nate and Ben, whose fates the family accepts they will never know. Things begin to return to “normal” around the city as power and water are restored, supplies reach the island, and business start to reopen. The novel shows how some people will help each other in the aftermath of a tragedy, speaking to Individual and Collective Trauma and Healing, though the declaration of martial law and forcing men into work crews also offers a look at the fraught circumstances following the storm. Many people, like Papa, volunteered to work and rebuild in order to help the city, but the military presence in the city established more organized efforts and used threats of violence to compel men into working. The way that Ezra and the family worried more about Josiah’s vulnerability to this than Seth’s shows that the society is more likely to see a young Black man as a source of free labor than they are a young white man. The society has experienced a collective trauma and will now need to come together to collectively rebuild and heal together. This collectivity is not extended, however, to Black people, speaking to Systemic Racism Even Amid Tragedy. The unity experienced by the white people after this tragedy does not extend to the Black community. Josiah and Ezra know that after this rebuild, regardless of their contributions, they will still be excluded and oppressed.
The novel acknowledges the city’s collective trauma in the New Year’s Eve scene, when crowds gather on the beach. Though they are ostensibly there to celebrate, it soon becomes clear that they’re there to mourn together, too. The crowd sings “Auld Lang Syne,” a song commonly sang on New Year’s Eve. The title means “Old long since,” or “For the sake of old times” and is about people who have known each other a long time catching up after distance and separation. The first verse includes the lyrics, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?,” which references the staggering losses of friends and family in the storm. Seth appreciates the closeness, but he “didn’t see how [he’d] ever be free of the ghosts” that haunted him after the storm (215). The collective mourning isn’t enough for Seth, who returns to the beach later that night and grieves alone. He thinks about all the things he’s seen and how he will forever be changed by it:
I knew I’d never be truly free. Dark water would always carry ghosts to me. I’d feel Zach beside me with every nail I hammered; I’d see Toby’s grin in every baseball. Blue gingham, washboards, saws, broken mirrors—these things and more would forever speak to me, and I’d listen. I’d remember (216).
This scene supports the theme of trauma but also shows the resilience of people. Though Seth will always be “haunted” by what he’s seen and experienced, he is able to move past it to some extent and even to recognize remembering as something that would honor those who were lost.
Seth’s transition to adulthood is fulfilled in these final chapters as well. He is finally able to release himself from the fear of his father’s disapproval. The first step to this is recognizing the fear and its effects on him: “Either way, Papa had helped me learn something about myself, about the fear that always seemed to sleep inside me, and about how quickly it could strangle who I was if I let it” (195). When Papa checks over Ezra’s new house, Seth starts to feel the fear again but is able to counter it with self-assurance and confidence: “I felt the flutter start up all over again, mean and fierce, but I held onto my grit. I was determined not to let fear best me this time” (197). Seth spends much of the novel worried about his father’s disapproval and afraid that he will be forced to go to college, but he learns that the solution to this is not external, it’s internal—when he recognizes himself for who he is and wants to be, Seth is able to overcome the fear: “I thought of Zach’s quiet, abiding strength, the way Josiah and I had plumbed our own depths, tapped our own strengths, and the flutter settled. My work was clean and precise. I was a carpenter” (197). This moment reveals that Seth’s transition to adulthood comes with a quiet confidence in his own abilities and plans for his future. These moments continue to highlight The Contribution of Different Forms of Labor to the Community. Everyone in the community has an equal form of labor to contribute, as the novel shows that different types of labor are good for different types of people. Seth fully steps into his type of labor, his contribution, by joining with his father to be a carpenter. Seth will assume this role and add his own contribution to Galveston through physical labor, through carpentry.
