Opening
The Fourth of July dawns bright in New Bremen, but celebration quickly curdles into dread. A perfect performance, a missing girl, and a single locket set the town on edge. Across these chapters, innocence gives way to suspicion as family loyalties, private shames, and buried prejudices collide.
What Happens
Chapter 16: A Tense Fourth of July
On the morning of the holiday, an anxious Ruth Drum sends Frank Drum to the Brandt house to bring Ariel Drum home for the evening’s chorale; Jake Drum is dispatched elsewhere. Frank finds the Brandt house empty, steps inside, and follows a soft cooing to a bedroom where Lise Brandt stands completely naked, ironing and swaying as if to unheard music. He retreats unseen, shaken by a startling glimpse of adult desire—his first profound encounter with Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence. When Lise appears fully dressed, she explains that Ariel has gone driving with her brother, Emil Brandt.
At lunch, Ariel returns elated: Emil, stirred by his near-death experience, is composing again. Ruth slams on the brakes, calling Emil a selfish “wounded man”; Ariel fires back, naming him a genius and revealing she has been transcribing his life story. Their fight flares into revelation and rebellion—an eruption of long-simmering Family Secrets and Bonds. Ariel shocks her mother by disclosing Emil’s past suicide attempt, then torches the day’s plans—“Fuck the performance”—and storms out, leaving the family rattled and exposed.
Chapter 17: The Last Performance
The town’s parade spills into Luther Park, where Frank, Jake, and Danny O’Keefe drift through games and fireworks. Morris Engdahl corners Frank, still seething over the quarry incident, but Warren Redstone appears, quiet and immovable, and Engdahl slinks away. Redstone studies Frank’s defiance, asks if he has any “Sioux” in him, and keeps his distance—protective yet unreadable.
Night falls on the premiere of Ariel’s chorale, The Freedom Road. Emil plays piano, the town singers soar, and the crowd rises in ovation. Ariel, radiant in a red dress and a gold heart-shaped locket with mother-of-pearl, bows beside her mother, smiling as if the future finally opens. Redstone, watching, murmurs to Frank that Ariel is “Pretty enough to be Sioux.” After the fireworks, the boys go home. In the dark hours, Nathan Drum and Ruth place worried calls. Ariel does not return. Frank, still trusting the world to right itself, drifts back to sleep.
Chapter 18: The Search Begins
Morning breaks with Sheriff Gregor and his deputy in the Drum kitchen, alongside Karl Brandt. Ariel is missing. Karl describes a bonfire after the festivities at Sibley Park: beer, friends, scattered rides home. He lost track of Ariel and assumed she left with someone else; hope that she stayed at Emil’s evaporates with a phone call.
The sheriff organizes a search along the river. Nathan, Frank, Jake, and Karl comb the party site, littered with bottles and ash. Karl mentions a fight involving Morris Engdahl. Prompted by Jake, Frank tells the sheriff about Engdahl’s threats and the slurs he threw at Ariel, pushing Engdahl into the frame. The sheriff decides to question him and asks Nathan and the boys to come. Officer Doyle heads downriver toward the Flats, and the sky turns heavy and gray—the family’s ordeal with Death and Grief quietly beginning.
Chapter 19: A Locket and a Suspect
Back at the parsonage, Gus sits with Ruth in a tense hush, the phone chiming with concern from neighbors. The sheriff calls: Engdahl is in custody. Nathan, Gus, and the boys go to the station, where Engdahl sneers through questioning and claims an alibi—he left the party with Judy Kleinschmidt and spent the night in an abandoned barn. The sheriff holds him pending confirmation.
The Drums return home to find Officer Doyle waiting. He opens a handkerchief and reveals Ariel’s locket. Nathan confirms she wore it the night before. The house chills—worry hardens into dread. Then Doyle delivers the sharper blow: the locket was found on Warren Redstone. Suddenly the town’s Truth, Lies, and Mystery narrows onto the quiet Sioux man with the unreadable gaze.
Chapter 20: “You’ve Just Killed Me, White Boy”
Nathan, Gus, and Doyle drive back to the sheriff’s office with the locket. Frank and Jake stay with their mother, nearly mute with fear. Emil and Karl arrive to help. When Karl hears Redstone had the locket, he barrels out toward town. Suffocating in the house, Frank heads for the river with Jake as thunder gathers.
At Redstone’s lean-to, they find the shelter empty and the buried can they once glimpsed dug up and gone. Redstone materializes, seizes Jake, and accuses them of stealing; Frank accuses him right back—he must have taken Ariel’s locket. Redstone denies it, saying he found it upriver and only wants his can returned. Sirens slice through the air. On impulse, Frank shouts, “Here! He’s here!” Redstone looks at him—no rage, only a grave, knowing sorrow.
He said calmly and without hate, “You’ve just killed me, white boy.”
Redstone runs. Frank stands in the storm, stunned by the weight of what he has unleashed.
Character Development
These chapters press each character to an edge—of youth, loyalty, and judgment—then force a step beyond it.
- Frank Drum: Curiosity flips into culpability. From glimpsing Lise’s private world to naming Redstone to the police, Frank moves from observer to actor, and the cost is immediate: guilt, fear, and an irreversible step into adulthood.
- Ariel Drum: At her peak—brilliant, assertive, and in love with music—Ariel rejects her mother’s control and defends Emil with fervor. Her sudden disappearance freezes that radiance in the town’s memory.
- Ruth Drum: Poise fractures into panic. Her fierce need for order and control collapses under the terror of a missing daughter, revealing raw vulnerability.
- Warren Redstone: First a wary guardian, then the town’s suspect. His quiet authority and final, devastating line expose how quickly prejudice can define a man’s fate.
Themes & Symbols
The holiday’s brightness throws shadows longer than any ordinary day. Coming of age is not gentle here: a boy’s startled glimpse of Lise, a sister’s triumphant bow, a mother’s fury—all swept into the undertow of loss. Family feuds, confidences, and unspoken shames, once manageable, now reveal the fragile seams of Family Secrets and Bonds when tested by fear.
The investigation becomes a study in Truth, Lies, and Mystery. Engdahl’s swaggering alibi, Doyle’s discovery, and Redstone’s possession of the locket braid evidence and assumption into a dangerous rope. The town’s biases do the tightening. The locket—gleaming, intimate, and violently out of place—embodies both Ariel’s severed connection to home and the story’s false certainties. Even the storm that rolls over the river mirrors the characters’ inner tempests, charging the confrontation with Redstone like a live wire.
Key Quotes
“Fuck the performance.”
Ariel’s refusal detonates years of pent-up conflict. She rejects Ruth’s control, asserts loyalty to Emil, and chooses art and autonomy over propriety—right before the narrative reverses her course and silences her voice.
“Pretty enough to be Sioux.”
Redstone’s compliment holds a paradox: admiration laced with the town’s racial lens. It foreshadows how Ariel, even in celebration, is pulled into a gaze that will later shape suspicion and blame.
“You’ve just killed me, white boy.”
Redstone’s calm indictment names the true peril—not only the law’s suspicion, but the community’s prejudice. Frank’s impulsive cry tips the scales, and the line brands him with a guilt that will define his moral education.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Chapters 16–20 pivot the novel from a summer’s coming-of-age to a community’s reckoning. The July Fourth triumph of The Freedom Road becomes the last clear memory of Ariel alive, and the investigation exposes the town’s fault lines—class, rumor, and race. Frank’s decision at the river doesn’t just advance the plot; it etches a lifelong lesson about fear, judgment, and the cost of naming a suspect before knowing the truth. From here on, every search for Ariel is also a search for grace.