57 pages • 1 hour read
Mary Downing HahnDeep and Dark and Dangerous
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A 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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Thirteen-year-old first-person narrator Ali, looking for something to read, opens a box of books her mother brought from her deceased grandmother’s house. Picking at random, she opens The Bungalow Mystery by Carolyn Keene, and out falls a torn photograph of her mother, Claire, and her aunt Dulcie posing near a lake. Ali estimates that they were around nine or 10 and 11 respectively at the time it was taken. Next to Dulcie, Ali guesses, is a girl but only “an arm, a shoulder, and a few strands of long hair” are visible (2); the rest of the image has been torn off. A note at the back reads “Gull Cottage, 1977. Dulcie, Claire, and T—” (2).
Ali shows her mother the photo, and, seeming flustered, Claire asks Ali where she got it. Her reaction surprises Ali. Muttering to herself, Claire swears she threw the picture away. Ali asks about the girl in the photo, but her mother pretends not to notice the arm or hair, saying she does not remember anyone other than her sister ever being at the lake. Ali’s father, Pete, returns home, notices the arm in the photo, and begins to ask the same questions as Ali. Claire dismisses them, too, puts the photo in her pocket, and tries to change the subject—but Ali’s dad refuses and continues, telling Ali the sisters spent their vacations at Sycamore Lake when they were very young. He suggests they visit in the summer, but Claire, yelling now, says she hated it and complains about the weather, bugs, and fights she had with Dulcie. She leaves the kitchen upset and storms upstairs to her bedroom. Pete reminds Ali to be kind to her mother because she upsets easily. Later, Ali can hear her parents’ raised voices upstairs. After that day, she never sees the photo again or talks about the lake, the cottage, or “T.” She contemplates calling her aunt but doesn’t to avoid her mother to finding out and being upset.
Ali begins to have recurring, disturbing dreams about the lake and a strange girl she suspects is “T.” She often wakes shaking and terrified but keeps the dreams to herself. Following the altercation, her mother begins having even more headaches than usual. Otherwise, the family members continue their lives as usual. An unplanned visit from her aunt puts this in order in jeopardy.
Chapter 2 Summary
A couple of months later, Ali is thrilled to return home from school to see her aunt, cousin Emma, and mother together in the living room. Dulcie, an artist, tells Ali she plans to fix up the cottage and spend the summer at Sycamore Lake in Maine painting for an exhibit. She wants Ali to join them to babysit four-year-old Emma. Claire thinks this is “the worst idea” and complains about the poor weather and mosquitoes again, warning that the lake is “dangerous” and “people drown there every summer” (8). Dulcie accuses her of always being negative, and Ali jumps in to remind her mother that she has taken swimming lessons for several years and is adept in water safety. Ali promises to be careful, but Claire, waiting to consult with Pete, avoids giving an answer right away.
While her aunt and mother talk privately in the kitchen, Ali reads to Emma from The Lonely Doll—a favorite book for both of them. Emma identifies with the character Edith, who has no friends and is lonely. The sound of their mothers quarreling interrupts story time. Dulcie criticizes Claire’s overprotectiveness, and Claire, tired of her older sister being domineering, worries she will take her daughter from her. They trade barbs, and eventually their voices lower and the cousins return to the book. As Ali reads, she feels conflicted about what she heard of the confrontation. While she agrees that her mother can be too controlling, she also empathizes with her mother being upset. She wonders what her mother meant when she said Dulcie “always took everything away from me when I was little” (10).
Chapter 3 Summary
Pete comes home just as she and Emma are finishing the last words of The Lonely Doll. Like Ali, he is pleased to see their relatives. Dulcie and Claire emerge from the kitchen somewhat reconciled and return to the living room. Dulcie fills Pete in on her plans for the summer, adding that she intends to hire a contractor to conduct repairs to the cottage. Again, Claire’s mother argues against Ali joining them, insisting that Dulcie will be so focused on her painting she will neglect to take care of the children. Offended, Dulcie reminds her sister that she has been raising Emma as a single parent.
Despite a dinner punctuated by arguing, Pete is persuaded by Ali’s excitement and Dulcie’s reassurances, so he agrees to let Ali spend the summer at Sycamore Lake. Claire is stunned and defeated by his decision. Ali, seeing her mother’s reaction, pleads for her permission, too. Her mother tells Ali she can go if “it means so much” to her (16). Claire clears the plates and cleans up in silence, but her movements clearly indicate her anger. Dulcie tells Ali that it is “the silent treatment” (16), inherited from their mother, and although Ali agrees, she is unwilling to join her aunt in criticizing her mother—especially since Ali got the response she wanted. They leave Claire in the kitchen and return to the living room, where Emma is reading The Lonely Doll with Pete.
Ali uses this moment to ask Dulcie about the photograph she found. Dulcie says there were no other children at the lake besides her and Claire. Trying to jog her memory, Ali says Grandmother wrote the girl’s name on the back, but only the letter “T” remains. Claire walks in just as Dulcie asks what Claire told Ali, and Claire answers that she told her she “didn’t remember.” Dulcie quickly adds that she did not remember either. Signaling an end to the conversation, Dulcie gets up and takes Emma to bed.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Deep and Dark and Dangerous begins with the discovery of an initially innocuous-looking torn photograph. However, when Claire has an intense reaction to seeing the photograph, she unwittingly ignites her daughter’s curiosity. This reaction transforms the photograph into a mystery—not unlike the Nancy Drew book in which it was discovered—that is begging to be solved.
The photo’s torn edge suggests it may have been deliberately torn to remove one of the people in it. This detail, along with Claire saying she thought she got rid of the photo, is a signal that she is trying to hide something. Her clumsy attempt to deny the obvious arm and hair only adds to this impression. When feigning ignorance fails, she produces a more explosive reaction to their continued questioning, which suggests there may be good reason for avoiding talking about the photo’s history. In doing so, she only adds to Ali’s interest. Ali hesitates to satiate this curiosity by calling her aunt because she fears calling Dulcie will upset her mother, but as Pete admits, Claire distresses very easily. Still, her reluctance gives the first hint that there may not be the most harmonious relationship between the sisters.
Although there is no mention of the photo or Sycamore Lake for some time after, Alii still dreams about them. This is evidence of the photograph’s impact on her as even her subconscious becomes preoccupied with it. At the same time, her repeated disturbing dreams of an unknown girl introduce a supernatural element, almost like a haunting.
The suspicion of conflict between Claire and Dulcie is confirmed when Dulcie arrives with Emma. The sisters are instantly critical of each other, and it doesn’t take long for their interactions to devolve into open hostility. Dulcie and Claire’s reconciling, even slightly, after their argument suggests that their relationship is not entirely fraught, but Claire’s attack on Dulcie’s parenting skills shortly after is a reminder of its tenuousness. Claire’s saying Dulcie “always took everything away from me when I was little” suggests that the tension between them is longstanding (10). Ali only catches this snippet of the sisters’ argument through eavesdropping. Other than Ali’s age, her curiosity is the only other characteristic Hahn identifies, and the author’s repeated emphasis of it establishes Ali as the amateur sleuth of this mystery. As such, Ali functions as a proxy for the reader’s growing interest.
Claire’s ominous warning about frequent drownings at the lake feels significant, especially coupled with Ali’s ardent defense of her swimming ability. This seems to hint at an event from the past relating to the lake while simultaneously foreshadowing events to come. Emma asking to read The Lonely Doll, a children’s book by Dare Wright, after dinner in Chapter 3 is also significant because it follows her getting Ali to read it in Chapter 2. Although its specific importance is not immediately clear, Hahn’s emphasis on it—and its importance to Emma—is intentional.
Ali uses her mother’s absence from the room to bring up the photograph with Dulcie, but her aunt’s response is almost identical to her mother’s. Despite being so dissimilar, the sisters are united in their approach to discussing—or rather not discussing—their childhoods at the lake. It is as if the sisters have a script for how they talk about their time at the lake, and they are fastidiously sticking to it. Added to this, Dulcie’s swift exit immediately after the conversation closely mirrors Claire fleeing upstairs in Chapter 1 and fuels Ali’s suspicion that the sisters are hiding something.
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