Lizzie Bright And The Buckminster Boy

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapter 11-Afterword

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 11-AfterwordChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

Reverend Buckminster is gravely wounded and unconscious after his fall from the cliffs. Turner attends a deacons’ meeting as his father’s representative and learns that the church wants to dismiss his father as pastor because of his lack of support for the Malaga eviction. The deacons agree to remove Reverend Buckminster from his position, and Turner and his mother begin moving the family’s belongings to Mrs. Cobb’s house, since the parsonage they currently live in belongs to the church.

In his spare time, Turner walks along the beach and sometimes meets Willis, with whom he has formed a tentative friendship. Willis tells Turner that the human remains buried in Malaga’s cemetery were exhumed by the town’s developers and taken to the hospital where the residents now live. Turner’s father dies from his wounds, which devastates Turner and crushes his hope that his father will help him get Lizzie out of the hospital.

As time goes on, Turner befriends a local named Mr. Newton, who supported Reverend Buckminster’s views about the Malaga eviction. Turner does chores for Mr. Newton, who offers to take him to the hospital and try and get Lizzie out. However, when they arrive, Turner learns that Lizzie died 10 days after she was taken to the hospital.

Chapter 12 Summary

Turner and his mother settle into their new routine in Phippsburg as they continue to mourn Turner’s father. Buoyed by their friendship with the Newtons, they return to the church. One day, Mr. Stonecrop comes to see Turner and offers to buy Mrs. Cobb’s house from him so that Turner and his mother can go back to Boston, saying that they are unwanted in the town. Turner refuses the offer, quipping that he's getting used to being unwanted.

Mr. Stonecrop’s business eventually goes under, and he leaves town with half of the town’s investments, including those of the Hurds. Turner and his mother invite the now-bankrupt Hurds to move in to Mrs. Cobb’s house with them until they recover from their losses. Turner and Willis plant a garden in the backyard of the house, maintain it, and work on a lobster boat together. As summer draws to a close, Turner goes back to the now-deserted Malaga Island for the first time since its residents were evicted. After spending some contemplative time alone on the island, he rows out into open water to try and find whales. He rows up to a group of whales, reaches out and touches one, which triggers an immediate realization of what they—and his father—were trying to impart to him: that connection is the most important facet of life.

Author’s Note and Afterword Summary

In his Author’s Note, Gary D. Schmidt describes the historical events that are depicted in the novel, most notably the eviction of Malaga Island. He explains that Phippsburg, Malaga Island, and the New Meadows shore are all real places in Maine and that the Malaga community was forcibly removed by the governor of Maine. The community’s deadline to move, unlike fall in the book, was July 1, 1911.

In an afterword following the Author’s Note, children’s writer Karen Cushman praises Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy’s characters, Schmidt’s discussion of important social issues, and the role of the natural world in the book.

Chapter 11-Afterword Analysis

These chapters complete Turner’s coming-of-age journey. By the time the book ends, Turner has a more mature, jaded understanding of the cruelties that those in power are capable of, and of the tragedies that can befall undeserving people. The displacement and death of Lizzie and her grandfather and the loss of his own father replace Turner’s childlike innocence with a more knowledgeable, tragic view of the world. The loss and tragedy that characterize Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy make it an elegiac story. “Elegiac” is a form of the word elegy, a literary form originally referred to Greek poetry memorializing the dead. Elegiac can refer to any work “expressing sorrow, often for something now past” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The novel illustrates this description as Turner’s experiences in Phippsburg result in him losing an important friend who might have become a romantic interest, the richness of living alongside the Malaga residents, and further time with his father. Turner loses his childlike perception of the world as being fair, but attempts to make his community a warmer and more welcoming place by forgiving those who have wronged his family and by opening Mrs. Cobb’s house to the Hurds.