Little Fires Everywhere

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The first chapter begins on the morning that Izzy Richardson sets her family house on fire. As her mother, Mrs. Richardson, is the only one at the house at the time, she exits the burning house and waits on the lawn for the other members of her family to come home and assess the damage. As Mr. Richardson makes his way back, the children—Lexie, Trip, and Moody—return home one by one, but Izzy is nowhere to be found. Lexie and Trip speculate that Izzy is responsible for the fire based on her absence from the scene and past erratic behavior. This suspicion is confirmed by the fire department’s eventual determination that the fire was set from inside the house as if a match had been lit in each room. The damage to the house is not irreparable in the end, but it does incite conversation among the children about what they should do if they are to lose all their possessions in the fire.

The night before, Mrs. Richardson sees Mia Warren and her daughter, Pearl, drive up to her house to drop off the keys of the house they were renting from the family. After leaving the keys in the Richardsons’ mailbox as the last step of ending their lease, Mia and Pearl quietly drive away without saying goodbye. The next morning, none of the Richardsons think to connect the fire to Mia and Pearl’s departure the night before.

Chapter 2 Summary

A year before the fire at the Richardsons’ house, Mia and Pearl are moving into the upstairs apartment of the two-family house that Mrs. Richardson inherited from her family on Winslow Road in Shaker Heights. Mrs. Richardson always found a tenant for the downstairs apartment but had inconsistent tenants for the upstairs one. When Mrs. Richardson met Mia, she was charmed by the young single mother’s artistic background and beautiful daughter and decided right away she would rent to them.

When Moody, Mrs. Richardson’s youngest child, learns that Pearl is his age, he bikes to the family property on Winslow Road to see Mia and Pearl himself. When Pearl catches Moody looking at her, she invites him to help her put together her bed frame inside the apartment. Moody meets Mia in the process. He learns from Pearl that she and her mom tend to move around a lot whenever Mia “gets the bug” (20). Enamored with Pearl, Moody invites her to spend time with him the next day.

Chapter 3 Summary

Moody and Pearl spend a lot of time together. Moody learns that Mia and Pearl have lived in different places across the US and all their possessions fit inside a single car. Mia takes on temporary employment in the different places they live, earning enough money for rent and basic sustenance. Her various odd jobs allow her to make art. She sends the art that she makes to her friend, Anita, who helps her sell it at a gallery in New York City. Once Mia completes an art project in a city and sells it through Anita, she takes Pearl with her to another city. While this has been the routine, Pearl tells Moody that her mom has promised her that they are going settle down in Shaker Heights. She says, “‘This time we’re staying for good’” (30).

With the prospect of Pearl staying in Shaker Heights permanently, Moody worries that his new friend will eventually lose interest in him. He decides to introduce her to his family. When she meets the Richardsons, Pearl is taken aback by the size of their house and their welcoming manner, as it is a much different life from her own.

Chapter 4 Summary

Pearl begins to spend all her time at the Richardsons’ house after school. She joins the children, except Izzy, for the late-afternoon showing of Jerry Springer. Everyone except for Pearl ridicules the guests on the show, declaring that Shaker Heights is different. After watching an episode where Jerry reveals the identity of the father of one of his guests, Lexie suddenly asks Pearl about her father’s whereabouts. Lexie speculates hurtfully that Pearl’s father might have been a rapist or left her mother for another woman. Lexie’s comments unsettle Pearl. When Pearl returns home, she asks Mia, “‘Was I wanted?’” (44). Mia tears up and responds, “‘You were wanted. Very, very much’” (45).

Chapters 1-4 Analysis

While the novel primarily takes place as a flashback to Mia and Pearl’s arrival in Shaker Heights, the book opens with the morning of the fire at the Richardsons’ house following Mia and Pearl’s departure from the town. The juxtaposition of these two periods of time highlights a connection between Mia and Pearl’s departure and the fire. The Richardsons’ confusion about the origins of the fire is cleared up as the plot progresses, revealing that Izzy started the fire as an act of revenge toward her family for their ill treatment of Mia and Pearl. She feels disdain for her family’s readiness to discard Mia and Pearl in favor of a repressed life despite all that the mother-daughter duo has done for each family member. By setting fire to the house, Izzy ensures that her family’s lives are uprooted from any attempt at a return to normalcy. This is not known immediately in the opening chapter but is revealed gradually throughout the novel.

In these first chapters, the differences between Mia and the Richardsons are very stark. Whereas Mrs. Richardson has grown up in Shaker Heights all her life and continues to build a permanent life there, Mia and Pearl have always lived life on the road, never staying in one place for an extended period. Mia’s initial decision to remain in Shaker Heights more permanently is an attempt to offer Pearl a sense of teenage normalcy, which her young daughter craves, especially after witnessing the Richardsons’ way of life. When the Richardsons adopt Pearl into their routines, the young girl observes the large differences between the Richardsons’ lives and her own, envying their sense of stability and rootedness.

Pearl’s desire to live like the Richardsons comes from her lack of stable identity, which is due to her mother’s transiency and her lack of knowledge of her own origins. When Lexie antagonizes Pearl about her absent father, it only exacerbates the insecurity that the young girl has always felt about the circumstances of her birth. Her identity has always been tethered to her mother, but Lexie’s questions about her father create anxiety in Pearl. When she asks Mia, “‘Was I wanted?’” (44), she feels apprehensive about her birth as an accident. Mia responds emotionally but does not reveal why the question moves her deeply. It is revealed later that Mia wanted to keep Pearl as her child so desperately that she broke the terms of her surrogacy with another couple to do so