Opening
Chapters 11–15 shift the story from summer unease to active excavation of buried truths. Through Frank Drum’s eyes, violence erupts, loyalties blur, and hidden histories—personal and communal—push to the surface. Secrets bind characters together as much as they break them apart.
What Happens
Chapter 11: The Rock and the Crowbar
Frank walks Jake Drum and Ariel Drum home with Lise Brandt after her brother Emil Brandt is hospitalized. Inside the Brandt home, Frank notices how the minimalist rooms honor Emil’s remaining senses: textured furniture, fragrant flowers, and music shimmering from a grand piano and hi-fi. In the kitchen, Lise—deaf and fiercely capable—accepts help only from Jake. She dismisses Frank and Ariel with a gesture, establishing a private channel between her and Jake that reframes Family Secrets and Bonds in unexpected ways.
Later, Lise drafts the boys to remove a massive rock from her garden. Frank and Jake hack and dig, but it’s Lise who conquers the earth: she wedges a crowbar against a smaller stone fulcrum and, with calm precision, levers the boulder free. They exult—until Frank, forgetting her aversion to touch, claps her shoulder. Lise whips the crowbar toward his head and screams—raw, animal, unending. Frank bolts, stunned by the unhealed wound inside her, a jolt in his Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence.
Walking home by the river, Frank spots Warren Redstone leaving the area of his lean-to. Hiding in the reeds, Frank watches a man with a flashlight rummage inside the shelter. As the man leaves, Frank recognizes Officer Doyle—friend of Gus—meticulously brushing away his tracks, which only deepens the aura of Truth, Lies, and Mystery now gathering around the town’s recent deaths.
Chapter 12: The Tin of Secrets
Emil returns home, brushing off his suicide attempt as an accidental overdose. Frank overhears Nathan Drum pressing Emil about the despair behind the act. Emil refuses to explain, saying that music no longer outweighs the terrifying burden on the other side of his life’s scale. He shrugs off prayer as “as useful as throwing a penny down a wishing well,” pitting Faith, Doubt, and Spirituality against unrelenting secular grief.
Frank leads a reluctant Jake back to Redstone’s lean-to to see what Doyle sought. Buried under sand, they uncover a large tin. Inside: a Playboy, a broken Mickey Mouse watch, a Purple Heart, Bobby Cole’s glasses, and the photo of the unidentified dead man. Frank recognizes the tin as a cache of stories the town refuses to tell—desire, war, loss, and death sealed together. He repacks the artifacts, covers the hole, and sweeps away their footprints, copying Doyle—and accepting stewardship of the secret himself.
Chapter 13: A Different History
During a Risk game at a friend’s house, Frank wanders into the basement and finds Redstone watching the Twins. Frank confronts him about the dead man’s photograph. Redstone studies him, then overturns the lesson plan Frank knows: he recounts the 1862 Dakota War from the Sioux perspective—starvation, treaties broken, promises vanished—and names the official story a lie crafted to justify theft and violence.
Redstone says he was jailed not for a crime, but for being a troublemaker—for telling this truth. He calls that duty his Wo iyokihi, his responsibility to keep the past from being twisted. The exchange cracks Frank’s faith in textbook heroics; truth, Redstone insists, depends on who speaks and who listens. He ends the conversation by dismissing Frank as a “white boy,” a final reminder of the gulf between them.
Chapter 14: The Quarry
Frank, Jake, and friends sneak to the abandoned quarry to swim. They find Morris Engdahl with his girlfriend, already spoiling for a fight. Engdahl slings a crude rumor at Ariel—calling her a “skag” and implying she’s with a rich boy—and Frank launches himself at him. They tumble into the water, where Frank realizes Engdahl can’t swim. Panic surges; Frank helps drag him to safety.
Sputtering with humiliation, Engdahl grabs Frank and hisses a death threat. His girlfriend croons his name, distraction loosening his grip. Frank shoves him back into the quarry and yells for the boys to ride. They hide behind spoil rock until Engdahl’s shouts fade. Frank staggers away with a new understanding of how quickly violence, rumor, and sexual power can distort everything.
Chapter 15: Overheard Conversations
That night, Frank listens as Nathan defends Ruth Drum to a visiting priest. Parish gossip mocks her smoking, drinking, and refusal to join the women’s society; Nathan answers that she isn’t a typical minister’s wife—and he wouldn’t change her. Later, Frank and Jake catch a ride with Karl Brandt. Frank asks directly about Karl’s intentions toward Ariel; Karl squirms and admits there’s no plan to marry.
At the college, Emil accompanies Ariel’s chorale. After Karl and Ariel leave, Frank lingers and overhears Ruth and Emil speaking in the empty hall. Their words reveal a long, intimate history—an old romance resurfacing in careful, tender phrases. Emil confesses his “darkness,” and Ruth promises she will be there for him, kissing his hand before she goes. That night Jake asks Frank what “skag” means, and Frank explains—feeling childhood snap and fray as adult realities crowd in.
Character Development
These chapters force characters to confront what lies beneath their public selves, accelerating fractures and forging quiet, surprising bonds.
- Frank: Protective, impulsive, and increasingly investigative, he gathers clues (Doyle’s visit, the tin) and challenges adults (Redstone, Karl). Violence and shame (Lise’s outburst, the quarry fight) strip his innocence, but he also shows compassion—rescuing Engdahl, keeping others’ secrets.
- Jake: Gentle and perceptive, he forms a trust with Lise that others can’t. He remains Frank’s conscience and begins to grasp the adult world’s blunt language and implications.
- Ruth: More than a minister’s wife, she emerges as fierce, restless, and deeply bound to Emil, a tie that complicates family loyalties.
- Warren Redstone: From vagrant to historian of pain, he claims authority over narrative and refuses silence, channeling anger into responsibility.
- Emil Brandt: His despair predates the overdose; music no longer sustains him. His past with Ruth and his sense of imbalance suggest a grief that art cannot equal.
- Lise Brandt: Capable and commanding in her world, she reveals a trauma so deep that touch becomes a trigger, even in triumph.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters braid coming-of-age with the slipperiness of truth. Frank’s path to adulthood runs through fear and bewilderment: the crowbar swinging at his skull, the sudden physics of a drowning body, the adult ache of overheard desire. Each scene widens his gaze from private pain to public narrative—what people say happened versus what did.
Mystery thrives in withheld histories. Doyle’s secret search, the lean-to tin, and the Ruth–Emil past expose the distance between surface and reality. Redstone’s counter-history reframes the town’s moral core, insisting that who tells the story determines what “truth” becomes, while family bonds prove both shelter and snare.
Symbols concentrate this excavation:
- The Rock in Lise’s garden: A buried trauma pried loose by leverage and will; the boulder moves, but the wound remains.
- The Tin Can: A portable reliquary of the town’s shadow life—war honors, cheap thrills, a child’s lost glasses, an unnamed dead man—ordering chaos into a secret archive.
- The Quarry: A scarred landscape of “mindless wounding,” where rumor and rage erupt, and mercy (saving Engdahl) coexists with retribution (pushing him back).
Key Quotes
“As useful as throwing a penny down a wishing well.”
- Emil’s contempt for prayer distills his crisis: faith, art, and friendship cannot counterbalance the unnamed weight on his life’s scale.
“Wo iyokihi.”
- Redstone’s word for responsibility reframes truth as stewardship. He accepts the burden of preserving a story that power tries to erase.
The “official history” is “a lie told by white people.”
- Redstone strips legitimacy from the textbook narrative, forcing Frank to see that history functions as a weapon when wielded by those in power.
“Skag.”
- The slur aimed at Ariel compresses rumor, sexism, and class resentment, catalyzing Frank’s violent defense and underscoring how language wounds.
“White boy.”
- Redstone’s brusque farewell marks the limit of Frank’s understanding and the distance he must cross to hear a history not meant for him.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters mark the novel’s pivot from foreboding to revelation. Frank no longer drifts beside tragedy; he investigates, intervenes, and pays the cost. The Ruth–Emil bond rewrites family dynamics and raises the emotional stakes that drive the plot forward. Meanwhile, Redstone’s history lesson expands the novel’s frame, rooting private secrets in older, deeper injustices. Together, the boulder, the tin, and the quarry tell one story: New Bremen’s past isn’t buried—it’s waiting to be unearthed by whoever dares to look.