54 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer McMahonThe Winter People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 7: “1908” - Part 10: “1908”
Part 7, Chapter 29 Summary: “Visitors from the Other Side: The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea “
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide, child death, and anti-Indigenous racism.
January 27, 1908
The day after finding the note near the closet, Sara goes outside to look for Gertie. She walks to where Auntie’s cabin had once stood on the property. She looks at the burned remains and wonders what is left of Auntie’s body there. She thinks that Martin called Auntie’s spirit back when he dug up her ring.
Sara recalls how Auntie helped Sara’s mother when she was pregnant. Her mother “believed Auntie was trying to poison her” (261). After her mother died, Auntie raised Sara, her sister Constance, and her brother Jacob. Eventually, Sara’s aunt Prudence convinced the townspeople that the “filthy heathen witch” (263) should not be allowed to stay in the home, so Sara’s father made her leave. Auntie swore he would pay for what he did.
Later, Jacob went out to talk to Auntie and didn’t return. The next morning, Sara’s father found Jacob hanging from the bar rafters. Sara told her father Jacob had gone to talk to Auntie. Her father went to Auntie’s cabin, shot Auntie, and burned the cabin down.
Part 7, Chapter 30 Summary: “Martin: January 28, 1908”
The next day, Sara tells Martin she intends to dig up Gertie’s body because she has found another written note she believes is from Gertie. The note says that there is something that belongs to whomever murdered Gertie in the pocket of the dress in which Gertie was buried. Sara says she thinks Auntie’s spirit killed Gertie. Martin begins to wonder if Sara killed Gertie. To appease her, Martin says he will get his brother and the sheriff to help them dig.
Part 7, Chapter 31 Summary: “Visitors from the Other Side: The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea”
January 31, 1908
When Martin, Lucius, and the sheriff arrive, they capture Sara and tie her to the bed. They think she is a “madwoman” who is suffering from “acute melancholia.” Lucius says he thinks Sara is writing the notes from Gertie herself.
After three days tied up, Sara is desperate to see Gertie again before her week is up. Lucius, thinking she has calmed down, unties Sara. Later, Sara hears Gertie in the closet again. Gertie comes and sits on her bed. Sara asks Gertie what really happened when she died, but Gertie doesn’t respond. Through the window, they see Martin leaving the barn with a shovel. Gertie disappears.
Part 7, Chapter 32 Summary: “Martin: January 31, 1908”
Martin digs out Gertie’s coffin. Before he can open it, Sara comes out with a rifle and asks him what he is doing. He tells her he wants to see what is in Gertie’s pocket. They open the coffin, and it is empty. Sara smiles and holds up Auntie’s ring. She says she got it from Gertie’s pocket. She accuses Martin of killing Gertie. He denies it. While Sara considers it, she tells Gertie to come out so that Martin knows she isn’t “crazy.” Martin catches a glimpse of Gertie and panics. He tries to grab the rifle from Sara and it goes off accidentally. He is shot and badly hurt. He runs into the woods.
Part 7, Chapter 33 Summary: “Visitors from the Other Side: The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea”
January 31, 1908
In the final journal entry, Sara describes how she hid Auntie’s instructions in the house. She doesn’t want to believe Martin killed Gertie. Gertie the “sleeper” is hiding around the house as her time runs out. Gertie writes Sara a message that says “Not Papa.” Sara hears a knock at the door and “a familiar, though impossible voice” (291) calling her name.
Part 8, Chapter 34 Summary: “May 2, 1886”
This chapter is a note from Auntie to Sara written 20 years before. Auntie describes the ceremony for bringing someone back to life for seven days. It involves a candle, an object owned by the dead, and the heart of an animal. The ceremony must be done at the location indicated on the map. Auntie says a sleeper cannot be killed and that if a sleeper kills someone, it will “stay awake for all eternity” (295).
Part 9, Chapter 35 Summary: “Katherine”
In the present day, Katherine, Ruthie, Fawn, and Candace walk up toward the Devil’s Hand. Katherine feels as if she can hear Gary’s voice encouraging her. On the path is a fox with a rabbit in its mouth. It startles when Candace shoots at it and drops the dead rabbit. Katherine picks it up and puts it in her backpack. She thinks it will be easy to take out its heart.
Part 9, Chapter 36 Summary: “Ruthie”
The group arrives at the base of the Devil’s Hand. They look for the cave entrance. It is covered by a large boulder. They push it away. Candace goes into the cave first.
While she is gone, Katherine urges Ruthie and Fawn to leave and get help, but they refuse. They want to find their mother. They go into the tunnel and find a large cavern in which someone has been living, lit by oil lamps with a fire going. Fawn finds their mother’s poncho. Ruthie finds her old green teddy bear. Then, Fawn finds the blood-stained jacket of the girl who went missing in December, Willa Luce. After looking around for Alice, Candace realizes Katherine has disappeared from the room.
Part 10, Chapter 37 Summary: “Sara: January 31, 1908”
Sara sees Auntie on her doorstep. She is shocked because she thought Auntie was dead. Gertie ran and hid when she heard Auntie’s voice. Auntie, wearing a fox pelt, tells Sara that she survived being shot and set on fire by Sara’s father. She went back to live with her “people.”
Sara tells Auntie she tried to stop her father, but Auntie says Sara didn’t try hard enough. Auntie swore to make Sara and her family pay for what they did. Auntie tells Sara she killed Gertie and framed Martin for it. Auntie grabs the rifle from Sara and points it at her. Auntie says she wants to be there when Gertie dies for the final time.
Parts 7-10 Analysis
In this section of The Winter People, important facts are revealed in both of the primary timelines. In 1908, Sara learns that Auntie was not murdered by her father, but that she survived and killed Gertie in revenge. In the present day, the group learn that someone is living in the cave underneath the Devil’s Hand.
The key theme of this section is The Impact of Loss and Grief on the Human Psyche. This theme is most dramatically explored through the character of Sara. She was already fragile from three pregnancy losses and the death of her infant son, Charles. Martin is concerned by this precedent. He recalls that when Charles died, his corpse could only be pried from her arms after she was sedated. Sara takes the extreme measure of conducting a ceremony to bring Gertie back and is passionate about finding Gertie’s murderer. As a result of this and her other unusual behavior, Martin has Sara forcibly detained by his brother, the doctor, who diagnoses Sara with “acute melancholia.” This is an example of how grief, especially woman’s grief, can be pathologized. Instead of believing, comforting, or listening to Sara, her husband and the other men restrain her “like a madwoman” (275).
This pattern is also present in Candace’s character arc. Candace lost her child to divorce. Like Sara, in her grief, she has taken to extreme measures to get her child back. Where Sara did a ritual to turn her child into a “sleeper,” Candace has decided to hold Ruthie, Fawn, and Katherine at gunpoint and to pursue Alice into the caves. Ruthie and Katherine use language that pathologizes Candace’s grief and behavior similar to that used by Lucius to describe Sara. For instance, Katherine describes Candace as “clearly nuts,” while Ruthie thinks Candace is “a crazy person” (223). Although Candace is unwell, her grief over the loss of her child is comparable to that of Sara and Katherine’s.
Another character whose grief is pathologized—albeit indirectly by the narrative itself—is that of Auntie. Auntie is revealed to be a villain bent on revenge against a woman who was an innocent child at the time her father banished her. The description of her appearance once more exoticizes Auntie: Auntie’s hair is “in wild tangles, tied in clumps with rags and bits of leather” (314). Her disheveled appearance makes her look like the evil “witch” she was once accused of being. Her Indigenous cultural aspect is emphasized with the reference to the “fox pelt draped over her shoulders” (314).
Auntie’s portrayal as a “savage” who kills children is an offensive stereotype about Indigenous peoples that dates to the earliest European colonists. There was a widespread belief, which was never substantiated, that Indigenous Americans killed European children in abhorrent ways. The use of this stereotype is somewhat incongruent to the narrative and what is known about Auntie thus far. Sara describes her as a loving woman who treated Sara and her siblings like they were own children; her final words were calling Sara’s name. It is unclear what she expected a small child to do against her grown father. Thus, the twist that Auntie killed Gertie for revenge is somewhat perplexing and reinforces the novel’s exoticized, stereotyped understanding of Indigenous culture.
