46 pages • 1 hour read
Cherie DimalineThe Marrow Thieves
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 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Long Stumble”
Frenchie and his group run all day, then make a hasty camp at night. Frenchie observes: “RiRi was dead. I had killed a man. And there was no taking either of those things back” (139). For another two days and two nights, the group runs and makes camp quickly. Miig notices Frenchie’s depression and shares more of his own backstory: Miig was depressed after losing Isaac and ran despite not really wanting to, and he eventually met Frenchie’s father, Jean. Jean’s group “had this crazy notion that there was goodness left, that someone, somewhere, would see just how insane this whole school thing was” (141). Miig has told Frenchie this story before, but it had always ended with Jean walking away.
This time, Miig continues, explaining how he walked back to the schools and “sat there for two days” (142), doing nothing. Miig attacks a pickup truck driver, demanding to know how to get into the schools. The driver responds that the Natives are “gone,” telling Miig to look in the truck. Miig finds crates filled with test tubes, labeled with subject numbers, age, sex, and tribe—the remains of the Natives in the schools. In anger, Miig shoots the driver, wounding him, and leaves him, “knowing leaving the driver meant he would die slowly and without dignity there on the side of the road” (144-45). Miig takes the vials, drives to a lake, and pours them out, giving them a more proper sendoff. Miig tells Frenchie, “As long as the intent is good, nothing else matters. Not in these days, son” (145).
Chapter 17 Summary: “Rogarou Comes Hunting”
On the eighth day of running, Miig hears Recruiters and orders the group off the trail. Miig spies a barn and says they’ll stay the night there. Tree and Zheegwon find a ladder in the barn that leads to a loft, and Miig agrees to let the group stay up there. Minerva refuses to come up, instead insisting that she wants to sleep right in the middle of the barn floor. In the morning, Frenchie awakes to the sirens of the Recruiters. Frenchie looks over to see Minerva, “wide awake and without fear” (150). As the Recruiters tell Minerva, “This is for the good of the nation” (150), the rest of the group hides in the loft.
After the Recruiters drag Minerva away, Miig notices the ladder is gone, which means “Minerva had moved the ladder sometime in the night, before the Recruiters woke us” (151). The group throws hay onto the floor of the barn as a cushion and jumps down from the loft. They find “two dozen rolled tin lids” in Minerva’s pack—reminiscent of “jingles we’d seen in old pictures” (152). Miig declares that they will move north again, but Frenchie refuses, saying, “I’m going after Minerva” (153).
Chapter 18 Summary: “On the Road”
The group goes on the road looking for the Native resistance near Espanola, moving “the same way as always, Miig as our leader, Chi-Boy as the scout, but now [Frenchie] was with them, helping to shape our path forward” (154). While moving, Miig finds Indigenous syllabics carved into a tree. Rose invites Frenchie to look for mushrooms. As they’re looking, Rose finds water that Frenchie describes as “a thin brown brook, pulling itself like a ribbon across the curve cut into the rock just ahead” (157). Frenchie becomes overwhelmed by his feelings for Rose, his sense of loss, and everything that has happened.
While overcome by emotion, Frenchie thinks back on his “uncle and his old stereo and his army of battered CDs” (158). In this memory, Frenchie and his family were visiting his uncle at the start of when things were getting bad. Frenchie’s uncle asks him to pick a CD: “And make it a good one, by the Jesus” (158). Frenchie grabs a random CD that turns out to be Pearl Jam. In the moment, Frenchie describes the song as “if grey could make noise” (160). He acknowledges that he hears the same thing in the moment with Rose; Frenchie and Rose kiss.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Found”
Frenchie’s group awakes the next morning at gunpoint. Frenchie is furious at first, thinking, “It was like I hadn’t learned anything since RiRi” (161). Their captors—also Indigenous—accuse Frenchie’s group of being snitches for the schools. One of the captors leaves and returns with an Elder, who asks who they are. Miig responds in Anishinaabe, and the Elder insists his group release Frenchie’s group from captivity. While the new group of Natives helps Frenchie’s group pack up camp, Miig tells Frenchie, “I do know the old guy” (165). Rose helps Frenchie braid his hair as one member of the new group jealously looks on.
The new group takes Frenchie’s group through a cave into a valley full of sweetgrass—something Frenchie’s group haven’t smelled in a long time. Out of a sweat lodge comes the Council, including Jean. Jean introduces the Council. As Miig introduces his group, he mentions their recent losses, to which one of the Council responds, “We’ve heard of your Minerva […] She’s here, in town” (170).
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
At this point, Frenchie experiences both the darkest and most hopeful moments in the novel simultaneously. Losing RiRi and Minerva, killing a man, and blaming himself for RiRi’s death all take an enormous toll on Frenchie, who becomes listless and overwhelmed by the enormity of what has happened. Yet, juxtaposed with these tragedies, Frenchie also finds his long-lost father, finds a group of Natives who retain aspects of the culture that Frenchie and his group thought lost, experiences love with Rose, and finds some of his own voice. In the same section where Frenchie learns the full truth of what happens to Natives taken to the schools, he also finds his voice as a leader, which leads to some of the most positive developments thus far for his adopted family. As dark and hopeless as Dimaline’s post-apocalyptic world often seems, she—and by extension Frenchie—finds hope in community and in the will to fight for what matters.
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By Cherie Dimaline
