Roll With It

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary

Ellie requests to go to Bert’s house, as she is hoping that Mr. Akers can answer some questions about spices at the grocery store. However, she only communicates to her mother that she needs to see Bert. When she arrives, she discovers Bert working in a shed outside. She is hesitant to talk to him at first. She says, “I forget sometimes that without Coralee around, Bert can be hard to talk to” (213). Their interaction, however, goes more smoothly than she expects. She discovers that Bert has been working on making a miniature model of Eufaula in a building behind his family’s trailer. She also learns that someone from school broke into the building and destroyed some of his models before Christmas. This is why he needed to stop riding the bus. She offers to help him repair his model, and they spend some time painting miniature trees to continue the repairs.

Chapter 14 Summary

Ellie falls asleep in the kitchen trying out different recipes for the bake off. She awakes after having a recurring dream. In this dream, she can walk, shower on her own, and hug her mother at eye-level. She expresses that using a wheelchair after this dream is always worse.

Certain that she still has not figured out the best recipe, Ellie goes to church with her family. She prays for God to help her with selecting the perfect recipe and to help her grandpa’s health. She recalls the dream again but makes sure to mention that she does not expect God to resolve her CP. By the end of the service, she feels certain about the type of pie that she will bake. Ellie prepares the pie on the day of the bake off without revealing what type of pie she chose.

Chapter 15 Summary

Ellie’s family, Coralee’s family, and Bert’s family head over to the Methodist church for the pie bake off, fish fry, and auction. Ellie and Alice carefully transport Ellie’s pie and enter it into the contest. Everyone gets a plate of food and settles down to eat. Coach Hutch joins them. Jonah gets up to see when the winner of the bake off will be announced and to get some more fish to eat, but he does not return.

They find out that he has left in the car. Ellie, Alice, and Mema leave at once in search of him. Alice drops Ellie off at home in case her grandpa returns and to answer any phone calls that may indicate his whereabouts. Shortly after Alice and Mema leave, Ellie hears a humming sound coming from the garage—a garage that no one ever parks in. She realizes that her grandpa is parked in the closed garage with the car running. She attempts to open the garage door but is unsuccessful on her first attempt and calls her mom. Alice does not answer.

Ellie is finally able to open the doors but cannot reach the driver’s side door in her wheelchair. She can see her grandpa slumped at the wheel. The garage is full of exhaust fumes.

Chapter 16 Summary

Ellie reveals in the form of a letter to Julia Child the pie she selected for the bake off. She used Child’s pie crust recipe, blackberries from Mema’s garden, and a lemon glaze because her grandpa loves lemons. Her pie won first place in the bake off.

Her grandpa is in the hospital. Ellie is the only one in the room. She recalls the paramedics telling her that her quick action was heroic; her grandpa could have been in much worse condition. When he wakes up, Ellie asks him what he was going back to the trailer for. He says that the auction made him think of some of the woodwork he had been doing at home. He went back to retrieve a carved mailbox, shaped like a pie. She tells him that they are considering placing him in assisted living. He admits that he knows and that he and Mema have discussed it. He says that the plan is for them to go to an assisted living facility together. Ellie shows him the blue ribbon that Evelyn brought to her at the hospital.

Ellie remembers when she was nine, and she was supposed to go fishing with her grandpa at the lake. They had to cancel their day at the lake due to a thunderstorm, and Ellie remembers crying on the way home. To make up for it, her grandpa spent the afternoon with her under the car port. She remembers that they roasted wieners and played cards. She also recalls her grandpa saying: “Sometimes […] the best plan is the one you don’t make for yourself” (241).

The story flashes forward, and Alice drives Ellie, Coralee, and Bert, seated in the truck bed, to the lake. Hutch meets them there. Ellie notes that Mema and her grandpa now live in an assisted living condominium. She and her mother have moved to Eufaula permanently and live in her grandparents’ trailer. Her mother is waiting for a full-time teaching position and promises to renovate the trailer to make it wheelchair accessible as soon as she can. Hutch lifts Ellie into the water with her lifejacket. She swims out to the buoys and floats.

Chapters 13-16 Analysis

Chapter 13 once again draws attention to diversity in disability. When Ellie is visiting Bert one-on-one, she is a bit nervous about communicating with him due to his sometimes-unexpected comments due to his autism. She typically has Coralee as a buffer in communication with Bert. As this scene plays out, however, Ellie and Bert effectively communicate and make a connection around the miniature town he has built. This illustrates both characters subverting expectations: Bert builds connections centered on an activity, while Ellie does not display full competence in navigating relationships with other individuals who have differing disabilities. This moment hence develops both Bert and Ellie as characters.

Food plays a significant role in these chapters, as it is finally time for Ellie to compete in the bake-off. Sumner develops baking as a motif in the novel; Ellie’s final selection for the type of pie to enter in the competition expresses her sense of identity in each component. The fish fry also acts as a moment that brings everyone Ellie loves together at one table to eat. This is a plot device that allows Sumner to build toward the climax of the novel: Everyone is present, and must disperse to look for Jonah when he disappears.

The delivery of her blue ribbon to the hospital foreshadows the fact that she and Alice will stay in Eufaula, as Ellie viewed this competition as a chance to prove to her mother that they belong here. In this way, the ribbon represents the resolution of Finding Belonging With Family and Friends.

The lake in these chapters plays a role in the past, present, and future of the lives of these characters. Ellie’s spoiled trip to the lake with her grandpa when she was nine reflects moments that have taken an unexpected turn due to life’s challenges: Ellie’s CP diagnosis and Jonah’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Like her grandpa and the wiener roast, however, these characters choose to make the best of what they have. They understand that their reality is better than what they could have chosen for themselves. As such, Sumner counters her thematic emphasis on the Common Challenges Faced by People With a Disability at the end by presenting characters with disabilities who have full, happy lives.

The lake ends the novel as a setting for current and future memory building. It provides Ellie with the opportunity to enjoy her embodied experiences and float freely. It acts as a location for both friends and family to gather. It also hints that these characters will be building more memories at the lake in the future.