The Girl Who Owned a City

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1975

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 3, Chapters 13-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 3, Chapters 13-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary

Todd has watched the skirmish from the top of Glenbard’s walls, and once the gang is inside, he sneaks down to check on Lisa. He’s thankful to find that she’s still breathing and immediately sets to work to help her. He first climbs to Craig’s window, where he finds Erika and tells her to fake an illness so that she can get into the hospital. He then climbs outside the hospital, where he, Jill, Erika, and Craig make plans to rescue Lisa.

Once they get Lisa, they take her to the Swift Road farm. Here, they realize that the bullet wound is minor; most of the blood is coming from a head injury Lisa sustained when she fell. Jill consults a first aid book to remove the bullet and stitch Lisa back up.

Lisa wakes up in the middle of the night in pain, and Todd calls Jill for help. Jill brings Lisa a glass of whiskey; Lisa hates the taste, but Jill makes her drink the whole thing to dull the pain. Todd tries to tell Lisa stories to get her back to sleep, but she is too drunk to pay proper attention; nevertheless, Todd thinks to himself that he’s lucky to have a sister like Lisa.

Back in the tower at Glenbard, Tom vows to punish whoever shot Lisa. He’d wanted to take the school, but he hadn’t wanted Lisa to get hurt. Moreover, he’d wanted to earn the school and feels as if he was only victorious due to a stroke of luck.

Chapter 14 Summary

The next day, Lisa is still in pain, but the children realize they forgot to bring aspirin from Glenbard. Jill and Todd go to the farm next door for supplies; in the meantime, Lisa makes plans to retake the city. She’s still lost in her ideas when they return, and her breakfast is cold by the time they can get her attention.

Lisa’s surprised to see they have real eggs. Todd explains that the farm next door still has supplies, and one of their chickens even managed to survive.

After breakfast, Lisa explains her plan to retake the city. First, Todd is going to disguise himself and sneak back in to spy on the city. That night, he’ll enter through the secret tunnel leading to the furnace room, and once it’s clear the next day, he’ll join everyone else and claim to be one of the Johansens (the newest family in Glenbard). Once it’s safe, he’ll find Charlie and tell him to be ready for them to retake the city on May 26. If Charlie is able to prepare in time, he’s to signal to Lisa on May 23.

In the meantime, Craig and Erika inspect the farm and begin to make themselves at home. Lisa questions the time Craig spends outside, asking why he isn’t helping to plan to retake their city. Craig chastises Lisa and reminds her that until she needed their help, it was “her” city. Lisa acknowledges her mistake and asks him for help; however, Craig declines, telling her that he and Erika are going to remain on the farm.

Chapter 15 Summary

Lisa is stung by Craig’s refusal to join them, but she continues her plans. She asks Jill to return to Glenbard in order to feed misinformation to Tom: she is to tell Tom that Lisa died from her injuries, but that before she did, she forgave Tom, and that Jill just wants to come back.

Todd returns around two in the morning. He tells them that Tom is struggling to run the city: Most of the children believe Lisa is dead and blame him for it. Further, Tom is a cruel leader who beats children for infractions. He even tried torturing Charlie for the location of the warehouse, but Charlie refused to give it up.

Lisa tells Todd to sneak back into Glenbard and resume his position. His new task is to find a way to tell Charlie the truth so that Charlie isn’t thrown off by Jill’s misinformation campaign.

Chapter 16 Summary

On May 23, Charlie and some other soldiers arrive and give Lisa the signal. She meets with them and tells them the plan: They’re going to travel to the surrounding towns in order to raise an army to retake Glenbard.

The next day, they set out. However, they encounter difficulties. No one in the first town is willing to talk to them; the second town seems completely lifeless, as if everyone has died. The “general” of the last town, Wheaton, is cruel and dismissive: He refuses to help and threatens them if they remain. Moreover, he tells them that Wheaton is going to join up with Chicago and its army of thousands, and that they’d be wise to do the same. Finally, he mocks them for having a girl as a leader. This is the last straw for Lisa, who punches him in the face before they depart.

Lisa realizes they won’t be able to raise an army. However, when they return to the farm, they find a crowd of other children; word got out that Lisa is still alive, and children have been leaving Glenbard en masse in response. At first Lisa is angry, but she then turns to the problem of planning their response.

On the 26, she announces her plan, and the 300-plus children enact it immediately. Lisa sneaks in through the secret tunnel, but she discovers no one is there. She finds Tom waiting for her in the old chamber. He tells her that he was unable to run the city and just wants to talk. Lisa sets down her gun, but as soon as she does, 50 hidden guards appear and surround her.

Chapter 17 Summary

Once they’re alone, Lisa chastises Tom. She tells him that he only wants to fight and steal because he can’t earn things for himself, and that it’s this fear that makes him cruel and weak. This cuts Tom deep; he drops his weapon and slumps into his chair. Realizing that she’s won, she tells Tom to leave and take his armies with him.

Now that Lisa is back in charge, her citizens are waiting for her to address them. Lisa wants to take some time to just relax, especially as she doesn’t know what to say, but they keep calling for her. Eventually she relents, realizing it’s her duty as their leader to speak to them, and she walks out of the chamber to address them.

Part 3, Chapters 13-17 Analysis

Todd’s heroics in the effort to rescue Lisa demonstrate not only the need to think things through, but also that sometimes we need to take chances. He forces himself to overcome his emotions in order to help Lisa; instead of wallowing in despair, he climbs down to check on her and see if she’s actually dead (something that, notably, Tom Logan and his gang did not think to do). Further, he makes an intelligent plan to get assistance. However, this plan runs into a problem—he doesn’t actually know which window is the nurse’s station—at which point he is forced to take a chance rather than do nothing. The novel is somewhat contradictory on whether it’s ever prudent to gamble in this way. On the one hand, if Todd hadn’t taken a chance, Lisa might not have survived; on the other hand, in later chapters, Lisa and others reiterate the importance of planning ahead and specifically not taking chances. Given this mixed messaging, the novel is likely arguing against taking unnecessary chances and risks—that is, thinking through problems to the extent that we are able to before taking action.

The novel contrasts Tom’s governance with Lisa’s, though we see very little of Tom’s governance up close. According to Todd, Tom is a cruel leader who rules through fear and force; he says this in implied contrast to Lisa, who leads through firm kindness. Again, though, the novel sends some mixed messages, as both leaders are authoritarian in nature. Tom and Lisa are alike in that they expect everyone to follow their rules; the main difference is in how they accomplish that. However, the novel doesn’t interrogate this distinction further, nor does it question the implications of Lisa’s policies—e.g. the morality of sending a child who doesn’t want to follow Lisa’s policies (or isn’t let into the city in the first place) back into the harsh world outside. This tension comes up again when Lisa criticizes Chicago’s leader for calling himself the “King of Chicago”; Lisa mocks this as a Dark Ages title but doesn’t recognize that her style of governance resembles a monarchy, not a democracy. Further, though the others recognize that the world itself is in a kind of Dark Ages, nobody challenges her on her criticism, and the novel doesn’t interrogate it further.

If there is any challenge to Lisa’s way of thinking, it comes from Craig, who ultimately decides to remain on the Swift Road farm. Lisa’s understanding of Glenbard is somewhat paradoxical. She claims it as her own because she thought of it, arguing that everyone must follow her rules or go find their own place to live, while simultaneously believing that no one could survive outside of Glenbard; she believes, for example, that Craig’s peace on the farm will only last until one of the armies decides to ransack it. Craig challenges this implicitly with his decision to stay, but also explicitly in his argument against Lisa’s approach; he follows up on his earlier challenges by arguing that Lisa’s pursuit of a better life will ultimately be her downfall, because people want to take everything that she builds. In other words, her ambition invites constant trouble. The novel frames this as simply the price one pays for ambition, justifying Lisa’s approach as the proper one. However, Craig does offer an alternative vision of human effort.

Tom’s downfall is part of what vindicates Lisa’s approach. In the end, Tom is undone not by force, but by words. Lisa suspects that fear has driven Tom’s actions all along, and she is thus able to cut to the heart of those fears in her final monologue; she convinces him that she is the true owner of Glenbard because she has earned it. She therefore reinforces one of the novel’s core arguments: that we must earn what we get in order for it to be worth anything. Tom’s fear, as Lisa exposes it, is that he is unable to earn his survival on his own; Lisa emerges as his moral superior (in the novel’s terms) because she is not only able to earn her own survival, but also to help others earn their survival as well. It’s not clear what will become of Tom—or, for that matter, why his soldiers didn’t continue to fight—but for the time being, Lisa has regained control of the city.