55 pages • 1 hour read
Nancy E. TurnerThese Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “May 21, 1886”-“January 10, 1887”
Jack leaves on a months-long campaign in pursuit of Geronimo in Mexico. Fortunately, however, Chess arrives with over 200 cattle and several cowboys to work at the ranch in Jack’s stead. As usual, Sarah is upset by Jack’s assignment. Chess stays on at the ranch to help with its expansion and becomes a comfort to Sarah as they spend time together; however, she is slightly annoyed that Chess does not register the same concern as she does for his son’s safety in the army.
Following Geronimo’s surrender, Jack returns in late August for a two-month leave of absence from service. Sarah missed him deeply; she compares his absence to missing an arm. When he arrives, however, he is in bad condition from sleeping outdoors during rainy season. He is gaunt and has a fever, so Sarah puts him to bed; he recovers after two days.
In late September, Sarah gives birth to their new baby, John Charles Elliot. This birth is much easier for Sarah than April’s. However, Charlie is born earlier in the day, before Savannah and Mama arrive to help, so Jack helps Sarah. She contrasts him with Jimmy, who would not help deliver April.
Chess leaves for Texas in early December, and Jack and Sarah discuss moving into an officer’s residence at the fort in Tucson. This will keep Jack closer to Sarah and the children, and April can attend school there; as Sarah never attended school, she wants this for April. She is nervous about the change to in-town living, however, and feels alone facing this new chapter in life. On moving day, Sarah finds her copy of The Duchess of Warwick in Jack’s saddle bag, along with an unfinished love letter from early 1882 that he never gave her. While she is sad to leave her family’s land, the letter comforts her.
Chapter 17 Summary: “January 12, 1887”-“January 18, 1888”
Sarah and Jack move into the officer’s quarters in Tucson, but the house is not as spacious or well-maintained as Sarah imagined; it is a structure with a sod roof, which leaks badly when it rains. The roof is replaced when Jack complains to his commander. Soon after, Jack leaves for another campaign, and Sarah spends that time at the ranch.
Harland takes his 12th-grade exams, and his teacher orders one for Sarah as well; she is nervous, though, and certain she’ll fail. A few weeks later, she sits for the exam and is worried about the result, which she will receive in a few months. About one month after the exam, Sarah is surprised to realize she is pregnant with her third child.
Later in the fall, Jack brings home Sergeant Lockwood and Blue Horse, an Indian scout, for dinner. Sarah gets along well with both men, and despite her neighbors turning up their noses at her for treating Blue Horse “like a real man” (300), she tells Jack to encourage him to visit whenever he likes. Jack goes away on a brief campaign with Lockwood and Blue Horse against renegade Indians in the area. They return a few days later, and Sarah learns Lockwood stepped in front of Jack and was shot in the chest by two arrows. She takes food to Lockwood at the infirmary, and when he is well enough, he accompanies her to church; this causes her neighbors to warm to her again.
For Sarah’s birthday, she and Jack travel back to the ranch to be with her family; he reads a letter containing her exam result, and they all celebrate that she passed. Sarah is thrilled but a little saddened that, unlike Harland, she won’t be able to attend the new university nearby.
Chapter 18 Summary: “March 9, 1888”-“November 21, 1892”
With Jack’s help, Sarah gives birth to their third child, Gilbert, early in the chapter. Blue Horse, who is now a regular fixture in the Elliot home, is also present. Toobuddy has puppies, and April begins school. On the way to school one day, two boys kill Toobuddy by intentionally hitting him with their carriage. April and Charlie are devastated, but Blue Horse comforts them with a funeral ceremony for the dog. Sarah reads in the paper that a local doctor treated the boys who killed Toobuddy for wounds from a beating. Soon after the dog’s burial, Blue Horse disappears from Tucson and doesn’t report for duty at the fort.
Following this event, Sarah begins writing much less often in her diary. However, she reports a fourth pregnancy and gives birth to Suzanne in Spring 1890. Jack and Sarah purchase land at the southern tip of town and plan to build a new house there. Harland, a recent college graduate and now an architect, helps with the design of their new home.
Jack goes away on a non-military mission with the marshal to round up some banditos in the northern region of the territory. For the first time in several years, Sarah is annoyed by his departure, especially because this is not a military campaign. Jack returns about two weeks later and reports that he saw Blue Horse, who is in hiding. Lockwood is married to a woman named Adelita, but the marriage is not a happy one.
Near the end of the chapter, Sarah suspects she is pregnant with her fifth child, and they move into their new house. The newspaper publishes a story on the new home that focuses on its modern conveniences and beautiful design.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
This section of the novel marks significant growth in Sarah’s character, beginning with her crying to Chess about Jack’s absences and ending with their relocation off the Tucson fort and into their own new home. In the years that pass between 1888 and 1892, Sarah settles into a comfortable “rhythm” with Jack and the children “that [she has] never known before” (300). Her narration is markedly less troubled by Jack’s absence when he must go on military campaigns, and her children occupy her in new ways that she finds quietly satisfying. While being a homemaker occasionally wears on Sarah, she is still able to find contentment in her children and her life close to Jack’s work. Unlike in earlier chapters, Sarah does not compare her experience of married life in this section with Savannah’s; this demonstrates Sarah’s coming into her own as a woman. Although she can no longer work outdoors or be as active in her new life in Tucson as she was at the ranch, in this section of the novel, she reports living the best times of her life so far.
Blue Horse’s presence in this section of the novel is also an asset to Sarah’s growth and maturation. Through him, she gains significant perspective about her life, and he supplies a comforting presence for both Sarah and the children. For example, after Sarah learns of her passing the 12th-grade exam, she is saddened that she will not be able to attend college like Harland; passing that exam, she reports in Chapter 17, feels like “a pointer for something I’ll never reach” (309). While she would not trade Jack and the children for higher education, she still feels “greedy […] to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and children” (309). Importantly, Sarah registers these feelings only once in Chapter 17, but in Chapter 18, she admits to feeling this sadness for nearly a year. The test marked the end of her education and left a “big empty spot” in her life (317). However, due to Blue Horse’s influence on her, she also has an epiphany in this chapter about her life and education’s role in it. She recalls that after Gilbert was born, Blue Horse told her, “Wisdom is not a path, it is a tree” (317). Upon remembering this, Sarah suddenly realizes that she can “do more learning shading this brood of [hers] than if [she] was all alone” (318); she suddenly understands that like a tree, she can “stay in one place and spread out in all directions” (318). Thus, she sees that her marriage, her children, and the ranch were not merely choices she made in lieu of education; rather, these aspects of her life augment and supplement her continual education. Sarah realizes that her life affords her unique opportunities to continue to learn and to teach. This revelation inspires her to donate some of her books to a new university being built in Tucson.
This new perspective on her education is also reflected in Sarah’s experience of her marriage. No longer does she wonder whether she truly knows Jack, nor does she struggle with confused emotions toward him. Instead, in this section Sarah’s acceptance of Jack, his vocation, and her unabashed love for him blossom. Her counsel to Adelita, Lockwood’s new young wife, reflects this perspective. She assures her, “[H]e respects you and you respect him, and you can disagree without having to force your ways on each other” (330). Although Adelita has a mental health crisis after becoming pregnant with Lockwood’s child and later disappears from the chapter’s action, Sarah’s befriending her helps Adelita find peace with her husband for a time. In fact, Adelita’s experiences provide Sarah with a lesson that foreshadows later events in the novel: While Sarah may help others with her wisdom and experience, she cannot dictate the events or outcomes of others’ lives.
