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 7-12 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Seth comes home from work on Wednesday evening and finds a lot of children playing in the yard. Kate plays with two young neighbor girls and some lightning bugs. Some of the boys play a version of baseball in the road. One of Seth’s brothers, Matt, pauses during the game because he sees a young Black child watching the game. Matt speaks gently and kindly to the boy, Toby, then lets him throw the ball. Seth is surprised but pleased to see this side of Matt. As he walks to work on Thursday, Seth sees the beautiful blonde girl, Ella Rose. She introduces herself as Henry’s cousin, surprising Seth. They talk about how they will probably see each other Saturday night when everyone goes down to the beach and the recreation areas.
Seth does well at work, but something “[tingles] at the edge of [his] senses” that afternoon (57). He notices Mr. Farrell, too, seems to have the same feeling; Seth catches him “looking out over the gulf, his face furrowed with an edgy bewilderment” (58). Seth notices rough water and high tide and a wind from the north that doesn’t cool them down at all.
On Friday, Seth is annoyed when his mother asks him to take Kate to the outhouse again. Seth tells his mother he “can’t keep doing this” because he’s “not a kid anymore” (59). He thinks his mother and father may never see him as a man. When he gets to Ursuline Academy, Ella Rose’s school, he waits for her; she eventually arrives and gives him her embroidered handkerchief to help him clean up his sweaty face. At work, Seth climbs up to the roof where he can see the whole city and takes in the view. The men arrive, and it is time to go to work.
Chapter 8 Summary
Friday is hotter than usual, but work goes well. That evening, Ella Rose comes to the job site to tell them the storm flag went up that morning. Mr. Farrell says they’ll still work the next day but will stay inside if it’s raining. Seth asks if Ella Rose would like to walk home with him and Josiah, but Josiah leaves and walks with Zach and his brothers instead, which Seth doesn’t understand. Seth and Ella Rose walk home. Ella Rose says the water doesn’t look the way it should—it should be shallow and smooth, but instead there is rough surf and waves. Seth asks if the storm could be serious. Ella Rose says that a nearby town, Indianola, “was completely washed away” by a storm about 15 years ago but claims, “everyone says it couldn’t happen again, and certainly not here in Galveston” (64). Ella Rose invites Seth in to meet her father; Seth tries to decline, saying he’s too dirty and sweaty, but Ella Rose says her father will prefer him that way. Her father, Mr. Covington, greets Seth warmly. He says he thinks the weather forecasters are “making a big to-do” over the storm (66).
When Seth gets home, he finds the children having a play funeral procession complete with a hearse. Matt and Lucas think the game is unserious and don’t want to play. Seth watches the other kids cover a “deathly still” Kate with flowers and feels uneasy (67). Seth has trouble sleeping, thinking he can feel “the deep thudding of gulf swells falling upon the beach just blocks away” (68).
Chapter 9 Summary
Seth goes to work on Saturday. The sky has a “mother-of-pearl iridescence” that Seth can’t look away from (69). At the jobsite, Mr. Farrell is up high, watching the beach. They get to work, but the storm increases as the morning goes on, and once it gets bad enough, Mr. Farrell sends them all home. Zach offers to let Seth shelter with his family because they live much closer to the job, but Seth says he has to get home and check on his people. They all start to trudge home in knee-deep water. Waves lift the Midway buildings and send them crashing to the ground, sending debris toward the shocked onlookers.
Seth and Josiah fight the rain and the water on the way home. They see thousands of tiny green frogs everywhere. They see families who live close to the beach evacuating on foot, carrying prized possessions and pets with them. Someone tells Seth and Josiah the bay and the gulf joined, flooding the city. They reach a street with a view—Seth looks back in time to see one of the city’s massive iconic buildings, the Pagoda, get washed away by the surf and collapse into the sea. Josiah and Seth gape, feeling like they are “watching the impossible” (73).
Chapter 10 Summary
Seth is in shock at what he saw. Josiah urges him forward, saying they need to go. They make their way through people and debris until they reach Uncle Nate’s house. Ezra and Aunt Julia are there, but Seth’s family isn’t. Seth thinks they decided to stay in the rental house or with one of the neighbors. Uncle Nate and Ben are at the lumberyard, trying to save what they can. Seth goes to check on the Covingtons and finds Ella Rose home alone. He takes her back to Uncle Nate’s house with him. He tells Aunt Julia he has to leave and go to the rental house to check on his family. She says his parents would never forgive her for letting him go back out into the storm, but he says he must go. Josiah volunteers to go with him. Ezra looks pained but says nothing.
Josiah and Seth head west as quickly as they can. The water level reaches their thighs, and the wind is strong and constant. The streets are full of evacuating people. One man “floated a bathtub full of children in front of him, trying to reach higher ground” (79). Seth sees the water take a woman who is carrying a young child. Seth and Josiah want to help but are too far away to reach them. A man walking in front of them collapses; they pull him from the water but find he was nearly decapitated by a flying slate shingle from a nearby roof and is already dead.
Seth and Josiah shield themselves with boards as they fight through the water. Seth nearly drowns, but Josiah pulls him to safety. Seth thinks about his parents and wonders if he’ll ever get a chance to “make things right” with them (81). The boys are exhausted but continue to fight for their lives through the storm, going on as people drop and drown around them. Seth knows that any moment, the water could take him or Josiah and there would be nothing they could do about it.
Chapter 11 Summary
Seth and Josiah make it to the rental house. They find a note saying the others have gone to Uncle Nate’s. Seth wonders if they passed each other on the route without realizing. He thinks about the woman carrying the child and wonders if it was Mama and Kate. Josiah says they should go take shelter with the Vedders. Seth says Aunt Julia said the Peeks have a very safe house, but Josiah says, “My bones is sayin’ Vedders” (85). Seth is surprised that Josiah is acting friendly with him and is comforted by it. He agrees to go to the Vedders’. A window breaks as they leave, cutting Josiah’s forehead. The boys run to the Vedders’, where they’re let in and given warm broth. Josiah stands until Mr. Vedder offers him a chair, telling him, “At times like these we can’t stand on ceremony” (86).
Seth looks out the window and is astounded by the sight of the flooded city: “home after home looking like tiny islands surrounded by an angry sea, like they’d been built in the middle of an ocean” (87). The house starts to fill up with more people, refugees from broken-up houses or people who feared their own homes wouldn’t survive the waves. Suddenly, the floor slants, and Seth feels queasy. They realize the house is afloat—it is swept off its six-foot foundation and falls to the ground, where it floods. Everyone hurries upstairs and takes shelter. Waves and wind batter the house. Seth, Josiah, and the men help defend the house, pushing away large pieces of debris when there are lulls in the waves and wind. They lose half of the roof. Everyone huddles together, shivering from the cold. Seth prays fervently for everyone’s safety and that the mother and child he saw earlier wasn’t Mama and Kate.
Chapter 12 Summary
The water continues to rise until the first-floor furniture floats high enough to bang against the second floor. Seth thinks about how he might die that night. He and Josiah huddle together for warmth. They endure the storm for some time, then hear voices coming from the west side of the house. There are two couples and an infant in an upturned bit of roof bumping into the side of the house. They get the five people into the house quickly. For a moment, they think the seven-week-old infant is dead, but they are able to warm and revive him. Seth continues to wait out the storm and worries about his family, but he can’t stop thinking about the woman and her child he saw drown earlier.
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
Just as the family begins to settle into their new lives, the storm hits. There are hints for a couple of days before hand—even Seth feels uneasy about the weather—but no one believes that anything bad could happen in Galveston. The residents are confident in the strength of their city and are not too worried that catastrophe could hit them. The storm’s onset is quick; Seth and Josiah’s day starts normally and ends in unimaginable trauma. The storm killed many, and the novel does not shy away from depicting the awfulness and frequency of the death. As Seth and Josiah make their way from Uncle Nate’s to the rental house, they begin to see people die in front of them. This begins to develop the novel’s theme of Individual and Collective Trauma and Healing, as the sights they see will linger with them long after the storm ends. There is emphasis on the community of the town in the early chapters, and as the storm hits, it impacts the community intensely. The residents have to work together to heal their collective trauma and rebuild.
The deaths also immerse the reader in the horrible reality of the storm, foregrounding human loss in the narrative and giving the reader a sense of the severity of the weather and the ultimately high death count. The drowned mother and child are particularly affecting to Seth, who knows it could easily have been Mama and Kate who were lost so quickly to the high waters. Seth and Josiah keep moving, but Seth knows that either or both of them could die at any moment. Despite this terrifying truth, they keep moving, help when they can, and use wood to shield themselves from flying debris and strong winds. This shows both boys’ courage and determination. Seth’s character is further developed in these chapters as he bravely goes out into the storm to make sure his family is okay. The reader also sees Seth’s compassion and generosity as he tries to help strangers and mourns their losses. The scenes at the Vedder’s home, when refugees work together to try to save the structure, show how people can come together in difficult times. Though many of the people sheltering with the Vedders are strangers to each other, they form a survival bond and work cooperatively to save everyone they can. They share the few supplies among themselves, showing that people will help under very difficult circumstances. This speaks to The Contribution of Different Forms of Labor to the Community as, during the tragedy, many people contribute what they can to the collective, and it is all equally helpful and valued, regardless of any one person’s specialties or skills.
The novel’s motif of the power of nature is demonstrated through the destruction Seth and Josiah witness. Whereas the water had been previously depicted as beautiful and fun, now it is shown to be an immensely powerful destructive force. Seth watches as massive, sturdy buildings are washed easily away by strong waves. The destruction is unthinkable, particularly for Seth—as a carpenter, he knows how much work goes into making these buildings strong and durable. However, the city’s many massive structures fall to the rush of water, turning human-made shelters into tons of debris that take down other houses and trap people to die inside mounds of wreckage. There is much emphasis on the community and the largeness of the society and its infrastructure. The author points to the catastrophes of natural disasters and how they can level human beings’ infrastructure, a poignant topic at a time when eco-crises are becoming more frequent due to climate change caused by human excesses.
The theme of Systemic Racism Even Amid Tragedy continues to develop through this section of the novel as Seth and Josiah battle the storm together. The novel shows that Josiah is always aware of the racism in society and what it means for the ways the two can interact with others. One example of this is at the Vedder’s home, when the boys are offered warm broth to heat them up after their time in the storm. Though Seth takes the seat and the broth gratefully and without question, Josiah waits to be invited to sit. When Mr. Vedder tells Josiah that they can’t “stand on ceremony” at a time like this, he reveals the degree to which racial difference is socially constructed (86). He also, however, partakes in this racism by trivializing the Black experience as “ceremony”; it is, as is obvious from the text, deeply embedded in the society at every level. The social position that Black people occupy in turn-of-the-century Texas is shown to rest not on real differences between the races but on “ceremony,” which suggests that race relationships are founded in constructs. Seth continues to notice the way Josiah is treated differently. The difference in the way Seth and Josiah interact is made clear when Seth listens to Josiah about seeking shelter with the Vedders instead of the Peeks. Though Josiah would not typically offer a contradicting opinion to a white man, he feels comfortable enough with Seth to share his thoughts. He even laughs, which makes Seth feel like they are developing a relationship. Although Seth still perpetuates the racism in certain ways, the text shows him taking steps to form community with Josiah and undo some of the racism that is so pervasive in Galveston.
