54 pages • 1 hour read
LeAnne HoweShell Shaker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A 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 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Heart of the Panther”
Thursday, September 26, 1991
Adair dreams of being shot by gangsters, and hears her father’s voice telling her that she is “the true hunter in the family” (loc 3880). She awakens on the plane with Gore, flying to New York. She finally asks Gore why he never called her, and he explains that he married someone else, though they are now divorced. Then, he asks her to marry him. Adair hesitates, despite how much she loves him, but finally agrees.
Once they get to New York, Adair is nervous about the responsibility she holds. She wants “to show [her] family that [she’s] worthy” (loc 3927) like her sisters. She has a vision of a panther sitting on the couch in the hotel room. It is her father, and he tells her how to track down Redford’s contact in the IRA, the one Redford called James Joyce. When she awakens, Tema’s agent calls and tells Adair that an Irish man has been trying to contact Tema. They go to the bar that Adair’s father told her about, and James Joyce approaches them. The man gives them an envelope and then goes on a long rant, which Adair cannot follow. He leaves, and Gore discovers copies of the documents Auda had made, proof that Redford was corrupt.
Durant, Oklahoma
Thursday Night, September 26, 1991
Tema is with Auda when she hears someone enter the Billy home. She sees “a stranger starting down the back stairs” with a gun and knocks “him down the narrow kitchen stairs” (loc 4036). When the police arrive, they ask her how the dead man, Hector D’Amato, “got the claw marks all over his face” (loc 4036). Tema claims ignorance, not wanting to reveal that as the man fell down the stairs a black panther appeared out of thin air and attacked him.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Absolution”
Talihina,
Rocky Road
Auda and Redford have reached their destination, and the car stops. In the middle of the road, Auda sees “her Uncle Isaac and Aunt Delores. They hold hands like lovers” (loc 4047). Behind them are several women “shaking shells and dancing” (loc 4047). Auda tells Redford they will “be separated forever” (loc 4056) and he asks her to tell him what she would have done had she been able to finish him off “that winter night in Yanàbi Town” (loc 4056). She says she would have treated him like an enemy, but that Anoleta would have committed suicide then, that she had once wanted to be united with him forever.
Redford tells her to “[g]o back and take up where [he] left off” but to “use the money for good” (loc 4068). Redford promises to stay where his fortune is, and she agrees to “go back and stand trial” (loc 4068). Isaac hugs Auda and tells her to care for his dogs for him; Auda believes he and Delores must have been killed by the D’Amato brothers, but Isaac tells her that he and Delores have agreed to “remain with the chief and help him stay put” (loc 4079). Auda is angry, but Isaac and Delores are pleased they will finally be together. They get in the car with Redford and drive away.
Back in Oklahoma, Auda comes out of her coma. After she recovers, she “writes out a confession” but is shocked when she arrives at the Choctaw Superior Court and sees what looks like “the entire Choctaw Nation” behind her (loc 4090). As Auda reads her confession, she reveals that, though she “can’t remember exactly what happened,” she was the one who shot Redford McAlester. Her mother enters the courtroom with “a tiny old woman” who claims her name is Sarah Bernhardt. Sarah is “a volunteer switchboard operator for the tribe” (loc 4101) who, on the day Redford was killed, saw Hector D’Amato standing over Redford’s dead body with a gun in his hand. Auda was unconscious on the floor. She also has a tape of Hector threatening to shoot Redford. She called the sheriff, but didn’t come forward before because of her fear of the mafia.
The judge declares that he is throwing out Auda’s confession, that though she may have intended to kill Redford “Hector D’Amato beat her to it” (loc 4148). Auda is upset that no one believes she killed Redford, and lays in bed for days. Gore, however, insists that she must be the one to go forward and lead the tribe. Auda gives Hoppy the black stone that Isaac gave her, the same one that Tuscalusa gave to Grandmother, and her mother gives her the porcupine sash woven by Shakbatina herself, and divides the turtle shells first worn by Grandmother among Auda, Adair, and Tema. Susan tells them that that she is proud of them, of the way they “came together as a family” (loc 4247). Auda looks in the mirror and “sees some other woman’s face staring back at her, radiant and bright with anticipation” (loc 4247).
Chapter 17 Summary: “The Shell Shaker”
Shakbatina speaks, insisting that she “must be the one to tell the story” (loc 4258). Shakbatina’s story and the story of her descendants was “[h]undreds of years in the making until past and present collide into a single moment” (loc 4258). She then reveals the truth: The day that Auda confronted Redford, it was Shakbatina who shot Redford, reaching out and slipping her “hands in front of [Auda’s] hands” (loc 4258). She repeats what she told the Blackrobes hundreds of years before, that the “Choctaws are hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh illi bilia. Life everlasting” (loc 4258).
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
This section once again explores the close relationship between life and death, and past and present. Although the reader may be saddened by the deaths of Isaac and Delores, Howe is clear that death is not the end of a story, merely a new chapter. Indeed, this lack of a clear demarcation is what has allowed Auda and her sisters to repeat the history of the Choctaw people—to relive Red Shoes’ betrayal and deception through Redford. However, this time Red Shoes is stripped of his power to harm by the love of his people. He is interred in Nanih Waiya, which symbolizes that he is one of them but will also prevent him or his spirit from harming anyone else.
This final section resolves many of the story’s varied threads, ensuring relatively happy endings for all the characters, including Redford/Red Shoes who gets to spend eternity with his true treasure, the money he stole from the mafia. The only one who seems unhappy is Auda, who believes she should have been convicted of Redford’s murder. What Auda fails to understand, however, is that what everybody sees on the surface bears little relationship to the truth.
For example, on one level Isaac and Delores were killed by the mafia, hunting for their stolen money. For Isaac and Delores, however, they chose to die—to be the ones to monitor Redford/Red Shoes and keep him from harming anyone else. In fact, Isaac and Delores are excited to spend eternity together. Similarly, though to outsiders it looks as if Tema pushed Hector D’Amato down the stairs, really the spirit of her father—or perhaps Koi Chitto—prevented D’Amato from harming Tema and Auda.
It is not until Auda receives Shakbatina’s porcupine sash that she truly understands: She is more than just herself, she is also her ancestors and her children, all at the same time. Auda, like the other members of her tribe, is the treasure of the Choctaw people. While she was with Redford, Auda lost sight of that. The work she did was important—building senior centers and hospitals—but none of that matters if the people are made to feel unimportant. When Auda finally looks in the mirror, “she sees some other woman’s face staring back at her, radiant and bright with anticipation. Someone she’s never seen before” (loc 4247). This symbolizes the future yet to be written. Auda is still tethered by her past and her heritage, but this argues that there is more to come that cannot be predicted by what has come before.
