48 pages • 1 hour read
Ann PatchettRun
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A 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 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Uncle Sullivan’s heart condition makes it difficult for him to either sleep or walk without losing his breath. As he grapples with his inability to walk over to his window-facing armchair, he remembers when he gained local fame, three months earlier, as a healer. It began with the disappearance of pain in a woman from his former church, then her friend’s cancer. His gift became so in-demand that Teddy now regularly guards his uncle’s bed so that he can sleep. Father Sullivan questions his belief in the afterlife as he drifts off in his armchair.
He is awakened hours later to Teddy pacing the floor of his room, anxiously relaying the story of Tip’s accident and meeting his lost relatives. Teddy is desperate for Uncle Sullivan’s perspective and begs him to visit Mount Auburn. Uncle Sullivan becomes winded by rising from his chair and Teddy regrets asking him to make such a long journey. Uncle Sullivan agrees to go on the condition that his nephew does not expect him to heal Tennessee’s injuries. Teddy obliges, just as a nurse tells Father Sullivan that people are lining up outside for him to heal them.
The narrative perspective shifts to Sullivan, who, across town, decides to stay at Mount Auburn Hospital with Tennessee. He begins their conversation by grilling Tennessee about watching Tip and Teddy since childhood. After she cooperatively responds to each of his questions, Sullivan makes several meaningful self-revelations to her. Feeling unusually forthright, he tells her that he left Africa because spies discovered that he was skimming, and illegally selling, surpluses of HIV medications. He also tells her that he was driving under the influence of Darvocet, an opioid analgesic, when a car accident killed his girlfriend, Natalie, 10 years ago; Doyle’s lies to shield them from criticism ruined his political career. He tells her: “I never told that story before. Do you believe me? I promised my father I would never tell the truth […] not until now” (155). Tennessee goes for surgery and Sullivan feels relieved.
Chapter 7 Summary
Kenya wakes up in the Doyles’ house and takes stock of her surroundings. She continues to admire the brothers’ book collection as sunlight quietly illuminates the large, peaceful bedroom. Kenya pads downstairs and speaks to Tip, who tells her about Sullivan and Teddy walking out into the snow around five that morning. They begin to get to know each other and Kenya plays the living room piano. Sullivan and Teddy return from the hospital.
Kenya wants to go to the hospital, but an unusually chipper Sullivan convinces everyone to make breakfast first. He retreats to bed, however; Kenya makes coffee and the brothers and Doyle plan for the day. After breakfast, they will pick up some of Kenya’s belongings from her apartment. Tip insists on bringing her for a run at Harvard’s fields, and they will go back to the hospital when Tennessee’s doctor calls. Kenya’s apartment, in the Cathedral housing project, is near the Doyles’ Union Park Street neighborhood. Doyle learns this and becomes paranoid about Tennessee’s proximity to his family; Kenya grows defensive.
Doyle ponders his church, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, as he walks with Kenya to her apartment. Doyle learns that Tennessee is a nurse for the elderly in assisted living care. At the apartment, her home’s charm touches him. He helps Kenya to pack some clothes in a pillowcase. She is unaccustomed to overnight stays away from home.
Chapter 8 Summary
This chapter centers on Tennessee’s perspective. She is prepped for surgery and given anesthesia. She feels herself awaken in her hospital bed and recognizes a woman from her childhood wearing a pumpkin-colored dress and sitting in her room: It is Tennessee Alice Moser, who died 10 years ago. Tennessee asks her friend if she, too, is dead or if she is alive; her friend tells her that she is in an in-between state. The two women share a long conversation, during which readers learn that Tennessee took Kenya from Tennessee Alice Moser’s home when she died of sepsis at Boston Medical Center.
During this sequence, Tennessee anxiously recalls how easy it was for her to take baby Kenya from Jamaica Plain and adopt the name of the girl’s mother as well. As their dialogue unfolds, readers learn that Tennessee Alice Moser’s death was unexpected; though she has been a nurse, she avoided seeking medical attention because of the cost, checking into the hospital when it was too late.
Tennessee Alice Moser scolds her friend for paying too much attention to the boys whom she gave away and not enough to Kenya, her biological daughter, whom Tennessee volunteered to raise. Their dialogue drifts to discussing Tennessee’s guilt over losing Tip and Teddy, her watching the Doyles, and her relationship with Kenya. Eventually the two friends fall asleep in the hospital bed.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
This section zooms in on Tennessee, clarifying many of the questions raised about her character in the novel’s earlier section. Readers learn that she is just as flawed as any member of the Doyle family, but that she also emits a sense of love and care for others comparable only to Teddy and Uncle Sullivan. Patchett achieves this ambiguous characterization, first by comparing Uncle Sullivan and Tennessee in Chapter 6. She also characterizes Tennessee in Chapters 6 through 8 by blending uncanny moments of resonance between the Doyle and Moser families. For example, her recollection of volunteering to care for Kenya reflects the ease with which Tip, Teddy, and Doyle left Mount Auburn with Kenya the night before.
Tennessee appears as a double for Teddy due to the values and characteristics the two share. Early in the morning after the accident, Sullivan Doyle has a meaningful exchange with Tennessee at Mount Auburn. Sullivan is not Tennessee’s son; yet, her vulnerability and simple, caring statements have the effect of opening his heart. She suddenly moves Sullivan to unburden himself for a moment. Tennessee effortlessly shows him that love can also mean letting those lies and secrets go, and this has a comforting, healing, effect on Sullivan. Teddy shows similar attentiveness and care to both Kenya and Uncle Sullivan. In this and the last section of the novel, he makes efforts to talk to Kenya and ask her questions about herself. He does this in a comforting, non-judgmental way, like Tennessee.
Patchett doubles Teddy’s instinct for comforting others in Tennessee, which enriches her characterization in important ways. The novel so far has depicted the Moser and Doyle families in terms of their contrasts along lines of economic privilege, but this section also signals commonalities between them. Tennessee does not judge Sullivan because (like Doyle asked of Sullivan, 10 years ago) she too has made Kenya lie and keep secrets. Doyle and Tennessee are doing what they can as single parents. Like Doyle, Tennessee may pay more attention to some children (Tip and Teddy) than others (Kenya). The anesthesia-induced exchange she shares with her deceased friend, Tennessee Alice Moser, reinforces this idea. During this conversation, Tennessee Alice Moser scolds her friend for not paying “more attention to the girl you had. If you were going to take on my name and my daughter then I wish you had taken on a little more of me” (201). Like Tennessee, not all of Doyle’s choices for his children are correct. Both characters nevertheless embody the theme The Importance of Protecting Loved Ones through the results that they seek in their relationships with their children of various ages.
Tennessee’s similarity to Teddy also recalls Father Sullivan, another character associated with healing effects. Though the retired priest’s healings are more widely known, Tennessee doubles Father Sullivan in terms of the supportive, concerned manner that she takes with Sullivan Doyle. Like Uncle Sullivan listening to Teddy and agreeing to visit the hospital, Tennessee listens to Sullivan despite being in great physical and emotional pain. Certain narrative clues hint that her compassion grows from the suffering to which she bore witness and experienced herself in life, including whiling away more than a decade watching over the Doyles. Similarly, Father Sullivan thinks about how he has spent his life in Chapter 6. Alone in his armchair, he wonders if he has wasted his life and the lives of many others on the faith. Though he has seen much suffering and given of his time to those yoked by pain and disease, he does not believe that he has performed any healing miracles. Ironically, the older he gets, the less he believes that there is an afterlife. This recalls the advice that Tennessee receives, urging her to pay attention to Kenya and live life more fully. Similarly, Uncle Sullivan now sees God in the act of living itself: “What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him” (132). Like Uncle Sullivan, however, who does not share this with Teddy, Tennessee has also not told Kenya that she adopted her. Her dialogue with Tennessee Alice Moser does not specify if Kenya is aware of this. Nevertheless, it is implicit that, to avoid undue suffering to the child, like Uncle Sullivan with Teddy, she says nothing. Through her family’s uncanny similarities to the Doyles, and by doubling Tennessee with major characters, Patchett elucidates both the complexity and the significance of her character at this middle-point in the novel.
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