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 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 6-8 Summary
When Crow turns 12, she hears from Maggie that Penikese has been turned into a bird sanctuary monitored by a gamekeeper. This comes as a surprise, since Penikese has been uninhabited and unused since the leper colony and hospital closed several years ago—most people, knowing the island’s past, want to stay far away from it.
Roaming the beach one night, Crow sees a light burning on Penikese. The gamekeeper must have lit a bonfire, yet she and Maggie cannot come up with a reason why. She thinks Osh would brush the incident off, because he seems uninterested in what goes on beyond his small world. Maggie tells Crow that when Osh first arrived on the island, he smashed up his boat—the “[f]irst time [Maggie] ever seen a captain wreck his own boat” (41). Now that he has Crow, he has no plans to leave the island. Crow’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she watches as another fire burns on Penikese the next night. Just as she and Maggie suspected, Osh is uninterested, attributing the fire to a treasure hunter or some other casual visitor.
Maggie tells Crow more stories about Osh’s rugged beginnings in the Elizabeths. At first, he did not speak at all, and ate “starfish soup,” or water flavored with the sea creatures (43). Osh kept to himself and only began to speak when he found Crow: “I didn’t talk because I had nothing to say. And there was no one to listen” (46). Crow points out that when Osh arrived on the island, the fires he lit must have seemed strange, but Maggie came to help as soon as she heard an infant crying, and has been their friend ever since, sharing food, clothing, and more. Crow insists “[t]here has to be a reason” for the bonfires on Penikese (47). She announces that she wants to go to the island and investigate. To her surprise, he agrees, and suggests Maggie accompany them.
The night Osh agrees to the expedition, he takes out an old cinnamon spice box and shows its contents to Crow. A letter attached to Crow when he found her was water-damaged, leaving just a few scant, cryptic phrases. Crow decides that the writing must have been her mother’s—“the first time [she] really believed [she] had a mother” (52). Osh hasn’t shown the letter to Crow because he feared if she somehow found out where she’d come from, he would not be able to keep her, or that she would want to leave. Touched, she assures Osh that she is happy with her life with him. Osh then shows Crow one more item kept in the cinnamon box: a gold and ruby ring. They decide the ring is not a sign that Crow came from a wealthy family, because of how poor she looked when he found her. The mystery of these items only adds to Crow’s excitement about her impending visit to Penikese.
Chapters 9-10 Summary
The next day, the trio sets sail for Penikese. The weather is good, and the island is small, wild, and spotted with decrepit structures once part of the leper colony. Osh gathers woadwaxen, a plant used to create yellow paint, while Maggie and Crow wander. They notice mounds and holes everywhere “as if someone had been digging for potatoes or carrots” (61). Crow sees that someone had been cooking a bird, which she connects to the bonfires.
Maggie points out the locations where the lepers lived, including the leprosarium (hospital for lepers). Her historical research revealed that many of the lepers came from other countries, including Russia, Japan, Tobago, and Senegal. Some of those people, Crow thinks to herself, may have had dark skin, like her. They walk to the leprosarium door, and knock. Crow hears a heavy thud inside, but no one answers. Instead, they see a large man heading their way over the hill, carrying a shovel and a gun.
They introduce themselves to the man, who is hostile and wants to know why they are on the island. They are there only out of curiosity, but Crow also cannot help asking, “[w]as there ever a baby here?” (65). Taken aback, the man insists he has nothing to do with Penikese’s former history, and demands they leave quickly. The man enters the leprosarium and locks the door, watching them from a window. Maggie remarks that the man’s accent sounds southern, though they know the gamekeeper came from Maine. The man’s story doesn’t add up—instead, he is most likely digging for something. Osh believes the man may be looking for the treasure supposedly buried in the area.
The group also comes across a small wooden grave marker with a lamb carved on it; Maggie tells Crow that means a baby was buried there. They find this mysterious, since records say that the only baby born on Penikese had been sent away to an orphanage for safekeeping. This piques Crow’s curiosity, and she decides to get in touch with the doctor formerly in charge of the leprosarium, telling herself that all of the mysterious pieces “were connected. But I didn’t know how” (71).
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
Chapter 6 makes clear that change is on the horizon for Crow. The news that Penikese will become a bird sanctuary is an external sign of a shifting world. Moreover, Crow plays an active role in precipitating the impact of this change, proving her independence and growing maturity. The fire burning on the island ignites her curiosity, so she instigates the plan to visit Penikese. Crow’s insatiable curiosity and determination to act on it propels the rest of the narrative.
The normally reticent Osh gradually reveals more and more of himself in these chapters, indicating that he has grown more assured of his close relationship with Crow. Although he has kept the note kept in the cinnamon box from Crow for many years because he feared she might want “to be somewhere better than a shack on a rock in the middle of nowhere” with him if she found out what the note meant (54), he now reveals this clue of her origins.
Crow thinks more concretely about her background and biological family. The insights Maggie shares about the history of Penikese add depth to Crow’s development. For instance, the detail she shares about the fact that many of the leper colony’s residents came from other nations, including Africa and South America, cause Crow to reflect on the apparent racial difference between her and most of the islanders. These details also buttress the historical aspects of the novel and provide valuable context for readers.
Like much of the novel, these chapters use foreshadowing to heighten the air of mystery and suspense. For instance, Crow, Maggie, and Osh first spy the large man on Penikese carrying a shovel and gun—an accessory that hints that he is a dangerous figure. Likewise, Crow’s intuition that something is amiss with the man and the leprosarium—and her sense that the lamb carving is meaningful—will later be validated.
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By Lauren Wolk
