Comfort & Joy

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 1, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Content Warning: The novel and this section of the guide include discussions of graphic violence and injury and the physical and psychological effects on the people involved.

Joy is a high school librarian heading to work on the last day before winter break. She reflects on the year that has passed since last Christmas. After she walked in on her husband, Thom, and sister, Stacey, having an affair, she went through a divorce and lost the two most important people to her. She brings cookies to contribute to the holiday party, but when she arrives at work, she tells the woman at the front desk that she won’t be attending. The library is quiet as she and her assistant Rayla organize things. They have worked together for five years, and Joy dreads Rayla’s master’s program completion, as she will leave their job. She reflects on how her work has changed since she started the job—now, she helps students navigate the internet rather than find books.

She wonders what she will do without work to distract her during these two weeks of vacation and thinks about how, in past years, she bought gifts for her ex-husband and her sister. She remembers how excited she used to be when she thought about her dreams of traveling during her vacations: It was one of the reasons she decided to work at a school. Rayla offers to cancel her plans to stay with Joy, but Joy tells her not to.

On her way home, she forces herself to buy a Christmas tree but cannot stop herself from crying. When she pulls into her driveway, her sister is waiting for her. Joy is surprised that she feels a longing for her sister rather than anger. She expects Stacey to tell her that she broke up with Thom, but she tells Joy she’s pregnant and invites her to their wedding that summer. Joy is devastated—she used to beg Thom to start a family, and he always said he was not ready. Joy mindlessly drives to the airport and finds a flight to a place called Hope, Canada. She pays a man to join his group of hunters on their charter plane to Hope.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Joy sits in the airport reading a magazine and finds a photo of a resort called the Comfort Fishing Lodge. She keeps the magazine, thinking she will add it to her collection of travel articles. She uses her camera to take a photo of the gate and the other passengers.

Joy boards the plane to Hope and sits in the last row, but soon after takeoff, the plane malfunctions. Oxygen masks fall down, and flight attendants give directions before taking their seats. Joy thinks about her sister and wishes she spoke to her. She hears loud noises and screams, watching things fly past her toward the front of the plane. When she opens her eyes, she realizes that they have crashed upside down, and her camera is still around her neck. Bloody and shocked, she crawls out of the wreck as the plane explodes behind her. She is thrown into the woods and hears sirens in the distance. She realizes they think she is dead from the blast. She passes out and sees her mother, who died years ago. She tells her about Stacey, and her mom tells her to wake up because it’s not her time yet. When she opens her eyes and remembers that no one knew she was on the plane, she decides to walk away into the woods instead of moving toward the voices at the crash site.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Injured, exhausted, and lost, Joy wanders through the woods and marvels at the silence of the natural world. Eventually, she reaches a road and follows it into a town, realizing they crashed in Washington. She sees a sign for the lodge from the magazine at the airport. She yearns for sleep.

Relieved that destiny has brought her to the place she saw in the magazine, she wanders into the lodge despite the “For Sale” sign on the door. When she finds no one at the front desk, she wanders around and finds a young boy in his room. The boy says, “Mommy?”, asks if she is real, and offers to check her in. She showers in her clothes and sleeps fitfully, having constant flashbacks from the crash, as well as memories of Thom and Stacey.

When she wakes, she listens to the sound of the birds outside her window and wonders if Stacey will notice her absence. She takes her camera to the lobby and tries to check in properly. There, she formally meets Bobby, the eight-or-nine-year-old boy with sad, bright blue eyes, and his father, Daniel. Daniel is lean with short black hair, a hollow face, and an Irish accent. He has striking green eyes. She learns that before Daniel arrived, Bobby lived with his mom and helped her run the inn. Daniel wants to sell it, and Bobby is reluctant. Bobby helps convince his father to let Joy stay for a few days. Bobby and Daniel leave the lodge to go chop wood.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Joy intends to find her old self, who still believes in love. She finds breakfast in a kitchen that reminds her of her mother’s. She leaves the lodge and walks around taking nature photos. Everything is wet, and a fog permeates the forest. She’s never seen anything like it.

She explores the abandoned cabins behind the lodge and imagines what they could look like if they were renovated. She marvels at the lake and reflects on her old dream of owning an inn. She notes that it was unfair that Thom made her keep her adventure books and articles in the garage. While wandering through the woods, she finds Bobby talking to someone she can’t see. He explains that he is speaking to his mom, and Joy tells him she just saw her own dead mom a few days ago. Bobby says that people think he is crazy, but his mom isn’t imaginary like Mr. Patches, who is the imaginary friend Bobby invented when he was four. Bobby tells Joy that his dad left when he was four—the same time Mr. Patches came around—and now, his dad is back because his mom died. Bobby doesn’t want his dad there. Joy watches Bobby play with his toys.

At dawn, Joy cannot fall asleep and hears Daniel’s voice from outside. He is watching Bobby as he talks to his mom outside. Daniel tells him to stop, and Bobby tells his father to go back to being a “stork broker.” She watches as Bobby storms back into the lodge crying, and Daniel stares at the lake, lost. She resolves to help them.

Part 1, Chapters 1-4 Analysis

In the first section, Joy embarks on an adventure that sweeps her away into a dream-like rainforest in Washington. As her environment dramatically changes and the journey and its characters envelop her, Joy herself begins to transform.

These chapters contain many instances of foreshadowing—the town, as the text later reveals, is not quite real, but rather a liminal space during Joy’s coma that will lead her toward her future. The otherworldly aspects of the rainforest and the O’Shea family exist in part because Joy is experiencing something new and beautiful, but it is also a figment of her imagination. At the start of chapter three, Joy wanders through the woods and says, “My vision is blurring […] it is as if I’m journeying in another dimension […] spiderwebs connect it all together […] mist coats the ground, swallows my feet and the spongy earth” (29). By comparing her walk to a journey in another dimension, she hints at the idea that magic played a role in her world shifting, and her experience there is not purely physical. She references spiderwebs connecting her world, highlighting the threads that still tie her to her body and life in Bakersfield, even as she sets off on this adventure. This alludes to The Mysterious Impact of Magic: The environment and its otherworldly characteristics signal Joy’s detachment from her familiar life and her immersion into a magical journey. Her worlds, while vastly different, are connected. The personification of the mist deepens the magic of the forest. Her environment seems alive and in control—as her vision blurs and the mist takes over, she is taken by a power greater than herself. By letting her environment “swallow” her, she surrenders to the forces that draw her through the woods, further opening herself up to finding faith and personal transformation. This surrender is critical, as it reflects Joy’s emotional state—overwhelmed and desperate for escape, she embraces the unknown as a form of salvation.

In this section, Joy operates in two different worlds—her hometown in California and the town near where her plane crashes—Rain Valley, Washington. These two settings play a pivotal role in Joy’s emotional state, as they represent two parts of herself as they slowly merge. In California, she thinks constantly about her past. She involuntarily wonders about Stacey and Thom, the way her job at the school library used to be, how others may perceive her, and when change will come. For example, the sight of the roses in front of her house triggers the memory of the day she walked in on her husband and sister: She remembers that “the roses [were] in full riotous bloom,” as opposed to their current state of death (3). She needs to “glide onto the track of [her] old life” (5). In Bakersfield, Joy fixates on mending her past rather than building a new future, and she feels stuck. In contrast, in Rain Valley, the foliage has a life of its own. As she takes pictures “of the spiderwebs beaded with dew, of swans on the lake, of listing cabins furred by moss and inhabited by mice” (44), she is reminded of her old dream to own a bed and breakfast. She focuses on spiderwebs, a spider’s creation, as inspiration for what she might make one day. Instead of focusing on what she has lost, she imagines what she might create—in Rain Valley, Joy is a witness to a world in which she wants to build a life. This shift mirrors the theme of Finding Happiness By Helping Others. As Joy begins to focus on helping Bobby and Daniel, her attention naturally pivots from the pain of her past to the possibilities of her future as she resolves to help them. Joy’s decision to take photos of her time in Rain Valley also reflects her desire to capture and remember what she sees. Moreover, her fascination with nature’s resilience and interconnectedness echoes her own need to find strength and connection in her fractured life.

Bobby acts as a foil for Joy throughout the story. Joy and Bobby are both mourning their past lives as they confront their new ones, lonely and searching for love. At their first meeting, they establish a foundation of faith in the supernatural. Joy reassures and understands Bobby when other adults do not. When Bobby says, “they all think I’m wacko,” because he still speaks to his mom who recently died, Joy quickly reassures him that she spoke to her dead mom “just the other day” (46-47). While adults usually tell Bobby to ground himself in reality and stop trying to communicate with imaginary figures, Joy validates him with her casual response. She makes him feel less lonely and he does the same, in turn, for her. Their shared experiences allow them to trust themselves and each other, which lays the groundwork for their enduring faith that they will find each other again. This connection reinforces the theme of Processing Pain Through Love. Both Joy and Bobby learn to channel their grief into relationships that provide mutual comfort and understanding. Joy’s ability to connect with Bobby also reflects her capacity for empathy and healing, setting her apart from other adults in Bobby’s life and positioning her as a stabilizing force in his world. At the same time, Bobby unveils the childlike wonder in Joy as she stops to marvel at the world around her. This transformation revives a sense of curiosity and innocence in her, providing a stark contrast to the busy, distracted person she was back home.

Bobby’s age also lets Joy act as a helpful adult figure, often giving him advice she needs to hear herself. Bobby is angry with his father for leaving when was four, but Joy gently suggests he gives his dad a chance: “He’s here, isn’t he?” (48). While different on paper, their situations are also parallel. Bobby is angry at his father, and Joy is angry at her sister, yet both Daniel and Stacey are actively trying to be part of their lives despite the hurt they have caused. By asking this rhetorical question to encourage Bobby to give his father a chance, Joy begins to consider the idea of forgiving her sister, whom she longs for throughout these early chapters, even prior to the plane crash. This parallel aligns with the theme of Processing Pain Through Love, as both Joy and Bobby learn that opening their hearts to the people who hurt them can lead to healing and reconnection. Her advice to Bobby becomes a form of self-reflection, allowing her to confront her own resentment toward Stacey and move toward reconciliation.