53 pages • 1 hour read
Kristin HannahOn Mystic Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Annie comes to Nick and Izzy’s home every weekday and comes to dislike the weekends because she is not with them on those days. She is starting to realize that Blake is not going to come back to her, and she knows that Nick is as lonely as she is. She realizes how bad a father Blake is but also understands that part of this is her fault because she always takes care of everything for him. She gave up her own identity for him because she loved him so much. Instead of following her dreams, she stayed home to care for their family. While she accomplished her goal, she is ashamed of the choices she made and does not know what she should do now. She does not think that she is as strong as Nick.
On Saturday morning, Izzy realizes that the cherry tree she and her father planted on the day of Kathy’s funeral is still not thriving. She is so happy that her father is back, but she is afraid he will leave again, and although she tries to talk to him, she cannot. Nick tells Izzy many stories about all sorts of things even though it is hard for him to speak when she does not respond. When they get home, she keeps wanting him to play Candy Land. She brings out Alice in Wonderland, and he reads it to her before bed. She speaks his name and tells him that she loves him, and he holds her as she falls asleep.
On Monday, Annie realizes that Blake never spent the day with her and Natalie like Nick is doing with her and Izzy, and she realizes that she has been lonely. She starts to remember how much she loved Nick when she was younger. She is upset that Natalie will never know what it is like to have an adoring father. At night, Nick tells Annie that he learned not to trust or care because he grew up with an abusive mother who was addicted to alcohol. He believed her abusive words, and he took care of her to the best of his ability. He confesses that Annie was the first girl he ever kissed. With Kathy, he always knew that she needed him, and he did not want to ask Annie to give up Stanford for him when they were younger. She tells him that she always wanted to own a bookstore, and he thinks it is a good idea and tells her about a property for rent.
Chapter 17 Summary
Izzy wakes up scared and goes outside to see her mom. She sees her mother in the mist, and her mother seems bright. Kathy tells Izzy that she heard her calling to her in the night. Izzy is afraid that her father will leave again, but her mother reassures her and tells Izzy that she does not have to disappear because Kathy will always be with her. Later, Izzy tells her father that she is starting to forget her mother. She knows her father loves her, and the scream that has been inside of her for so long is gone. She takes off her black glove and asks her father if he can see her hand. She can see both her hand and her arm, and she believes this means that she is staying with her dad.
Annie does not want to go back to California. She asks her father what he thinks about her opening a bookstore, and he tells her that she is just running and that she cannot forget her real life. He tells her that she is a housewife, and she wonders how long her father has been making her doubt herself. She tells her father that she is not the same person she used to be and that she no longer wants to be careful.
Chapter 18 Summary
Annie, Nick, and Izzy go hiking in the Olympic National Forest and then go swimming. Annie wakes up the next day feeling sick. Nick brings her some items to help her feel better, and she cries because no one has ever taken care of her. Eventually, she comes to realize that Nick had such a hard time because he was an idealist and that attribute left him more susceptible to life’s tragedies. Nick reminds her that she used to want to be a writer, and she realizes how life takes away a person’s dreams. She still feels pain from Blake’s betrayal, but it has calmed down a bit. She believes she will always feel the pain of it to some degree.
Nick reflects on how similar Annie looks to the day he met her, and he remembers the AA advice of not getting into relationships during the early days of sobriety. Meanwhile, Annie looks up at his bedroom window and takes her wedding ring off. This makes her feel vulnerable, as though she is somehow begging for sex. She knows, however, that Nick is not a naive child and would be able to understand what she wants. She goes to his room, and they have sex.
Chapter 19 Summary
Nick looks sad when he mentions Annie going home on June 15, less than a month away. They decide not to worry about the future. Annie spends much more time at Nick’s house because it feels right to be with him. She watches him read a bedtime story to Izzy and almost cries because this is what she has always hoped and dreamed of. Nick does not think that Kathy ever made him feel as open to dreams as Annie does. He wonders how his life would have been different had he chosen Annie when they were younger.
They talk about kids, and Nick says he has always wanted more kids, but he had a vasectomy because Kathy would not have been able to handle having more children. He asks her why she did not have more children, and she tells him that she had a son named Adrian who was born prematurely and died after four days. After that, she was not able to get pregnant again even though they tried. Nick knows it is too late to avoid loving Annie. Izzy is invited to a party at school, and she is apprehensive about going. Annie and Nick encourage her to attend, and when Nick and Annie bring her to school, she decides to walk in alone. Her classmates clap when she enters.
Part 2, Chapters 16-19 Analysis
In this section of the novel, Annie begins to realize some of the mistakes she made that contributed to Blake’s poor ability to fill his role as a father, and this realization shows that she is beginning to understand that she does has some control over her life. When Blake first left her, she was confused because she believed she had already done everything she possibly could to make both Blake and Natalie happy. She was betrayed and was rightfully hurt, but she was unable to take any real responsibility for the problems in her marriage because she did not know what her own mistakes were. Now she is starting to realize that Blake was allowed to be a bad father partially because she did everything for him and for Natalie and did not require him to take any responsibility for his relationships. She does not believe that he was right in making the fathering choices that he did, but she is starting to understand the ways in which she enabled his poor behavior.
In some ways, Hannah emphasizes The Bonds Between Friends and Family by describing situations in which those bonds are less than ideal. Annie’s realization about her own flaws as a wife and Blake’s flaws as a father correspond to her growing realization of all that her daughter has lost out on by not having Blake around more. Father figures are important in the novel in order for someone to overcome adversity and grow into an actualized self. Annie largely took care of her own father, and he was more interested in making sure she was financially secure as an adult than he was in encouraging her to follow her dreams. Even now after Blake has left Annie, Hank’s primary response is to just assure her that he will return. Similarly, Nick’s father was not available, but he was able to overcome the traumas of his childhood because Joe took him in and cared for him. Izzy’s father temporarily left her emotionally, but he cares enough about her to fight to return to her, and because of this, she is able to heal in ways she would not have been able to otherwise. Fathers are shown to be crucial for a child’s development, and as Annie starts to see what a good father Nick can be, she laments Natalie’s lack of a solid relationship with Blake, but by this point, she also recognizes The Futility of Trying to Change People.
Izzy is finally able to take off her glove and see her hand when she realizes that she is no longer in danger of losing either her mother or her father. She has, obviously, already lost her mother to death, but Kathy’s spirit assures Annie that she does not need to disappear in order to have her mother with her. Her mother will always be with her. Nick has started spending time with Izzy and has redeveloped a relationship with her. Because of this, she finally trusts that he will not leave her. This trust is bolstered when the spirit of her mother tells her that her father will not leave. Because she feels secure in her relationship with her father, and because she feels secure that her mother will always remain with her in some way, she no longer believes that she herself is disappearing. Throughout the novel, people disappear in relationships in different ways, and Izzy’s way of processing these disappearances is more literal than most. Once she is secure in her bond with her mother, however, she no longer needs to cling to the belief that she is physically disappearing. Annie, however, still has not learned how to be in a relationship without emotionally disappearing.
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By Kristin Hannah
