43 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren WolkBeyond the Bright Sea
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A 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 36-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 36-38 Summary
Crow’s fears are confirmed: is the wreck is the Shearwater. Osh, Maggie, and Crow help retrieve sailors from the water. One of them, Crow realizes, is “the young man I’d seen leaving New Bedford Harbor” (253). He has been injured and knocked unconscious, and they offer to take him in until the storm dies down, since there is no hospital in the area.
Osh and Maggie retrieve supplies, leaving Crow to stay with the sailor in the cabin. She tries telling herself she is looking at “Jason—no, Osh was right—at the sailor” (257). That night, Kendall breaks in and demands the treasure. He says he has already attacked Osh and Maggie, but Crow refuses to give in. When Kendall threatens to burn down the cottage with the sailor inside, Crow agrees to take him to the treasure.
Crow takes Kendall to Cuttyhunk and leads him to the hornbeam tree at Maggie’s where the treasure is. Crow feigns being afraid of climbing the tree, but Kendall forces her to do it. Midway, she jumps down, runs into Maggie’s house, locks the door, and watches Kendall climb the tree. Hearing a noise, Crow finds Osh and Maggie tied up but relatively unscathed. They hear a thud: Kendall has fallen from the tree and a collapsed branch has knocked him out. They tie Kendall up and drag him into Maggie’s barn. After they send for the police, Crow grabs the bag of treasure from the tree and wonders what to do with it.
Back at the cabin, the sailor finally awakens, but does not speak. Nevertheless, Crow is excited, imagining his “smile when he discovered that I was his sister, and he was my brother” (271). The police take Kendall away in shackles, and Maggie tells Crow that Cuttyhunk townsfolk are impressed with her. The sailor wakes up, and says he recognizes Crow, having seen her when she was on the ferry to New Bedford.
Chapters 39-40 Summary
The sailor is not Crow’s brother, however; his name is Quincy. Distraught, Crow heads to the beach. Osh follows her and tells her “[y]ou are the one who was right all along […] Nothing wrong with what you wanted” (274). Though Quincy isn’t her brother, she still has one out there somewhere.
Crow tells Quincy her backstory, but leaves out the part about the treasure. She mentions the tattered letter from her mother, including its cryptic list of words. Before he leaves, Quincy urges her to read it and fill in the blanks between the words with what she imagines her mother would have written. Crow asks Osh how she’ll find Jason now, but he tells her she is “the one worth finding” (279).
Osh and Crow go out on their boat to check on the second bundle of treasure, hidden underwater attached to a buoy. They agree to check on the treasure frequently. Crow preserves half of the treasure for Jason. She also holds on to a small amount for Osh and Maggie. With Maggie’s help, she gives the rest of the treasure away: some to Miss Evelyn to distribute to the lepers, and the rest to orphanages.
Osh tells Crow that she has another name in his native language: It does not mean “crow,” but rather “daughter.” Touched, Crow replies, “[j]ust like Osh […] means father” (283).
Chapters 36-40 Analysis
The novel’s climax puts Crow into both physical and emotional danger: Kendall’s attack and the dashing of Crow’s expectations of meeting her brother. Kendall is a terrifying villain, a direct threat to Crow’s family: a “bully who had come out of nowhere to hurt us” (261). His assault of Maggie and Osh, and his threats to hurt Crow and the rescued sailor test Crow’s courage and resourcefulness. At the same time, Crow is desperate to believe that the unconscious sailor is her brother. Finding out that he is not is emotionally crushing for her.
Crow’s newfound maturity emerges in her response to both threats. She reveals her great love for Osh and Maggie, her cleverness, and the extent to which she has matured, when she risks harm by tricking Kendall and escaping to save them. She also demonstrates her patience and growing wisdom when she takes Osh’s advice not to “decide who [the sailor] is before he has a chance to tell you that himself” (257), doing her best to avoid thinking of him as Jason. This allows the revelation that he is a man named Quincy to not destroy her.
Rather than neatly solving the puzzle of Crow’s birth and reuniting her with living biological relatives, the novel ends by giving her the psychological resources to live with incomplete knowledge. Quincy literalizes this idea when he tells her to imagine her mother’s words where they are missing in the letter. Instead of relying on external clues to tell her about her past, she starts looking inward for personal fulfillment and a sense of identity. This allows an even greater closeness to grow between Crow and Osh, and anticipates her considering her future alongside her past. Crow’s decision to donate her part of the treasure to orphanages builds on the strong empathy she’s developed for the residents of Penikese and others who have been isolated. Meanwhile, by setting aside some of the treasure to care for Maggie and Osh, and potentially Jason, Crow has become a forward-looking protector of those she loves.
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By Lauren Wolk
