51 pages • 1 hour read
Stacey LeeUnder a Painted Sky
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A 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 38-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary
Sammy finds Andy and Badge at Harp Falls and is ready to attack Badge until Andy reassures her that he is her brother, Isaac. Andy realized this when she saw his picture on the “WANTED” bulletin. Isaac tells his side of the story, supplementing and correcting the rumors that Sammy had been hearing for months. While he killed neither the man nor the baby, he blames himself morally for the baby’s death as it was abandoned by its mother who bolted in fear. Using the stone on her bracelet, Andy tries to remind Isaac of his goodness, but he is poised to jump off the falls to his probable death. The moment is interrupted by the sound of Scottish voices—the MacMartin brothers have come to claim the bounty for the girls.
Chapter 39 Summary
The MacMartin brothers recognize Isaac as part of the gang and decide to shoot him for the bounty instead. Sammy tries to shoot the Scottish brothers but the gunpower got wet when she dropped the gun in the water and the gun will not fire. Isaac tricks the brothers into tying his hands, and then claims to see a falcon to distract them. He grabs both men and pulls them off the cliff with him, but only one is killed. Angus returns to attack the girls, and after almost killing Andy, falls into the river and is dragged toward the falls along with Sammy.
Chapter 40 Summary
Using her rope skills, the recovered Andy throws the lasso toward Sammy, but it is grabbed out of her hands by Angus. Sammy remembers the story of the monk and the harp, which makes Sammy realize that she is struggling against herself. Instead of rejecting fate, she surrenders herself to it. She grabs onto the rope and she and Angus go over the falls together.
Chapter 41 Summary
Angus had tried to put the rope around his waist but only got it around his neck. He is strangled to death as the two of them hang suspended together by the rope. Sammy enters into a state of limbo where she briefly meets her dead Father. She then finds herself alone in a marble palace and believes this place of loneliness is the real hell. Then a rabbit appears, and she climbs on its back and together they shoot into the sky.
Chapter 42 Summary
Sammy regains consciousness to find Peety’s arm around not Andy but Annamae. It turns out that West knew that she was a girl since the day of her father’s death, when she nearly bumped into him in the street. West admits that he behaved badly and that his behavior was due to his prejudice and lack of a good upbringing. He tells her that she is the one for him.
Chapter 43 Summary
The damaged bodies of the MacMartin brothers float to the surface of the river, reassuring the group that they are finally free of that danger. Peety proposes marriage to Andy. Sammy promises her father that she will open the music conservatory, with or without her mother’s bracelet.
Chapters 39-43 Analysis
The turbulent setting of the falls matches the action of the story and contrasts with the idyllic Eden of the previous section. Andy’s quest to reunite with her brother is complete, but it is also bittersweet because the siblings have a short time together before their reunion is threatened by the appearance of the antagonists, the MacMartin brothers.
Isaac’s story epitomizes the theme of Race and Racism in the Westward Expansion. His retelling of his activities in the Broken Hand Gang humanize the character and speak to the importance of the perspective from which a story is told. In the novel, marginalized people such as the enslaved often have their stories told for them by others: Sammy (and hence the reader) hears about the Gang through the gossip of emigrants, the official voice of the law through the marshals, and the “WANTED” bulletin. Now, however, Isaac gets to speak in his own voice and tell his own story. He is not a murderer of a baby but rather an unlucky man driven by a desperate desire to be free, which represents by extension those throughout history who have been maligned by racist myths. Lee uses the historical fiction genre to explore narratives that are typically marginalized and silenced by the history produced by white society.
With one narrative strand resolved (that of Andy’s quest), the story shifts radically to another to a climax with the sound of the Scottish voices. A violent confrontation between the MacMartin brothers and the girls has been building since their first encounter. While Sammy struggles for her life, she also slips out of reality into a dream-world that resembles the afterlife. Lee hence blurs dreams and reality to suspend the drama of the action and create a moment of calm in order to build tension surrounding Samantha’s fate. It is only when she surrenders that she realizes that it is herself she has been fighting.
The romance threads are also (somewhat) resolved, although Samantha’s ultimate fate with West remains ambiguous. Peety and Annamae are engaged in the final chapter, and West reveals that he knew who Samantha was before she even left St. Joe. This means that he knew that she was wanted by the law for murder since their first encounter and knew all along that Sammy was a girl. As he admits, it was his racism that kept him apart from Sammy until he finally realized that she was the one whom he wanted. The romantic subplot hence intersects with the theme of Race and Racism in the Westward Expansion. The final ambiguity of their relationship creates a sense of realism; unlike Peety and Annamae, their ending does not reflect a conventional romantic plot.
The novel ends by considering The Role of Music in Identity. Samantha’s quest to find Mr. Trask and her mother’s bracelet shifts into a promise to her father to open the music conservatory. Although the reader does not see this promise come to fruition, reflecting the realism of her ambiguous ending with West, Samantha ends the novel by forging her own sense of identity in relation to her Christian and Chinese heritage and her own love of music.
