39 pages • 1 hour read
Liz MooreLong Bright River
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Now”
Back in the present, Mickey is still reeling from the news that her sister has been missing for a month. She begins texting members of her family to see if anyone has seen Kacey lately. They all reply in the negative. Since the following day is Thanksgiving, Mickey decides to take her son to her cousin Ashley’s family gathering. She might be able to pick up a lead on her sister that way.
Mickey violates police protocol by pulling up her sister’s arrest record to see if there are any recent arrests. Finding nothing, she then checks Kacey’s Facebook page. Apparently, Kacey has been seeing a new man named Dock, but Mickey can’t find any more information about him online.
She’s distraught when she learns that a fourth strangulation victim has been found in Kensington. Even though it isn’t her sister, Mickey begins her own missing person’s investigation by enlisting the aid of her former partner, Truman.
Truman is still recovering after having his kneecap broken by a masked assailant with a baseball bat. The man drew a gun on Mickey when she chased him down. All she could see of his face were his pale blue eyes. She is overcome by guilt that the attacker got away, and her own self-reproach kept her from visiting her convalescing partner.
Mickey finally conquers her shame and decides to call on Truman. She thinks, “From Truman I sensed an appreciation of these qualities in me; I felt understood by him in a way that, if I am being truthful, I hadn’t felt since Kacey and I were allies, in our youth” (136). Truman puts Mickey in touch with an uncle who runs a safe injection site in the back of his store. The old man knows all the junkies in the neighborhood and introduces Mickey to Dock. The latter says he broke up with Kacey months earlier and hasn’t seen her lately.
During her regular police rounds that same day, Mickey arrests a domestic violence offender. His face looks strangely familiar. Though she can’t place him, Mickey finds that the man’s predatory attitude unnerves her. Later, Mickey returns home to tell Thomas the happy news that he will see his cousins on Thanksgiving. She knows the boy is unhappy with their current living arrangement, and Mickey thinks back to Simon’s role in the domestic disruption. Shortly after he and Mickey broke up, Simon stopped sending the monthly checks that allowed Thomas to attend a school for gifted children in a good neighborhood. When Mickey confronts Simon about it, he threatens to use his influence to have the boy taken away from her. This is the reason she moves away without telling Simon and must put her son in a less expensive school.
The following day, Mickey and Thomas arrive at Cousin Ashley’s house. Ashley and Kacey look similar and are the same age. Mickey says, “I cannot shake a particular image as I round each corner: it’s of what my sister would be like, today, if her life had gone differently. I imagine her as she has been on the rare occasions in her adult life that she has been well” (157).
Though the family is surprised to see Mickey, everyone warily welcomes her back into the fold. She asks her cousins Bobby, John, and Louie if they’ve seen Kacey or know Dock since all three are some-time drug addicts. While they say they haven’t seen Kacey, all are dismayed that she got involved with Dock, who they believe is dangerous. Bobby promises to ask around for news of Kacey and Dock.
Chapter 8 Analysis
This section consists of one exceptionally long chapter devoted to events in the present. Mickey’s erratic narration, jumping around from topic to topic, is at least partially due to her increasing fears for Kacey’s safety. Now that she knows her sister has gone missing for a month, Mickey is so distracted that she focuses most of her attention on a search for Kacey. In doing so, she is willing to cross several procedural lines. Mickey violates protocol to check her sister’s arrest record. She stalks Kacey’s Facebook page to find out about her most recent boyfriend, Dock. Mickey then visits her former partner and enlists Truman’s help in a side investigation that she conducts in street clothing when she’s supposed to be on duty. Though we learn from the flashbacks that Mickey is a rule-follower, we see in this chapter that she will make exceptions when she’s protecting her sister.
Mickey’s sense of desperation can only be explained by her need to maintain a link with her sister. The pair developed this link to combat the toxic family atmosphere that characterized their childhood. The theme of corrupt family dynamics comes to the fore when Mickey and Thomas attend a Thanksgiving party at Cousin Ashley’s house. Mickey describes herself and a loner and an outsider at these O’Brien gatherings. While the family as a whole isn’t quite as emotionally punishing as Gee, the mindset is similar. Ironically, many of the younger family members are drug users, even though they won’t admit that fact to Mickey. As a police officer, she is already in a different category from the rest of her relatives, but her sense of isolation runs deeper than that. She suspects everyone at the party is lying to her. At this point in the novel, her reaction could be interpreted as paranoia until later events justify her suspicions. Mickey is an outsider in this family unit, and everyone really is lying to her. Because we’re seeing all of these events from Mickey’s perspective, Moore uses Mickey’s suspicions and doubts to withhold information from the reader, cause the reader to question Mickey’s beliefs (such as whether she’s paranoid or justified in doubting her family), and deepen the mysteries of the past and present in the novel.
