Lizzie Bright And The Buckminster Boy

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004

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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

Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Turner Buckminster, the teenaged son of a minister, arrives in Phippsburg, Maine with his parents. His father has been assigned to a local church. Although Turner’s parents have a seamless transition to the community, the locals embarrass Turner after he plays a game of baseball with the local men and boys. The town has a particular style of pitching that Turner struggles with, causing the town’s residents to taunt and belittle him. His peers also tease Turner for being unwilling to jump off a cliff into the ocean. Dejected, Turner wanders down Phippsburg’s main street and meets two elderly women living across the road from each other. One, Mrs. Cobb, chastises him for kicking rocks near her house, and the other, Mrs. Hurd, treats Turner kindly and sympathetically. Turner’s father comes by on the street and urges his son to join him and the church’s deacons as they tour the area.

The end of the chapter switches to 13-year-old Lizzie Bright’s point of view. She has been sent to cut firewood near her home on an island separated from Phippsburg by an inlet, called Malaga Island. Lizzie is watching the tide come in instead of doing her chore and then climbs a tree. From her vantage point, she can see Turner, his father, and the deacons standing on a cliff. The men see her, laugh and point, and one pulls out his pistol.

Chapter 2 Summary

The narrative switches back to Turner’s perspective as he stands on the cliff with the church men. The older men laugh off the gesture toward Lizzie with the pistol and send Turner off by himself to explore. When he returns to the group, Turner finds that Mrs. Cobb joined his father and told him about Turner throwing rocks at her fence. As punishment, Reverend Buckminster makes his son go and read to Mrs. Cobb every day for the rest of the summer. On his first day at Mrs. Cobb’s, Turner gets into a fistfight with one of the deacon’s sons, Willis Hurd, when Turner sneaks outside while Mrs. Cobb is napping. He wins the fight but gets blood all over his clothes and tries to wash it off in Mrs. Cobb’s kitchen. When she finds him in his underwear, Mrs. Cobb is shocked and furious with Turner.

The chapter switches back to Lizzie’s point of view as she watches the church men from the mainland. She calls the men “the frock coats” based on their distinctive way of dressing (35). The men disembark on Malaga Island, and Lizzie runs to tell her grandfather, a preacher and leader of the island community, that they’ve arrived. The church men tell the island residents that they must move on, saying that Phippsburg doesn’t want to support them. The men insinuate that the islanders have stolen things from the town in the past and are only being held in check by the influence of Lizzie’s grandfather. They also claim that the islanders, including Lizzie and her grandfather, don’t have a right to the land and houses that have been their homes for generations, saying that no formal deeds prove their ownership.

Lizzie’s grandfather leads the church men to the island’s cemetery, where his and Lizzie’s ancestors are buried, saying that the presence of their forebearers serves as the “deed” for his community’s right to be on the island. The church men insist that the islanders must move on. Dejected, Lizzie’s grandfather concedes, but Lizzie is determined to help save the islanders’ homes.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

These chapters introduce most of the novel’s important characters, including Turner, Lizzie, Reverend Buckminster, Mrs. Cobb, Reverend Griffin, and the Hurds. This cast of characters—and Mr. Stonecrop, who makes his first appearance in Chapter Four—drive the book’s plot forward through their conflicts and growth. Turner is established as the book’s protagonist, but the first two chapters also include lengthy passages from Lizzie’s point of view. This indicates that although the novel focuses on Turner’s perspective, Lizzie is an incredibly important character. The shifting point-of-view allows Schmidt to portray what is happening on Malaga Island even when Turner is not there. Since the island serves as the center of the racial and social conflicts of the novel, this authorial choice helps Schmidt establish the characteristics of the island even though Turner hasn’t visited it yet.

The early chapters also foreshadow the book’s central conflict between the residents of Malaga Island and those in Phippsburg. Trouble is already brewing when Turner arrives, and the sense of power that the white men possess is apparent when they visit the island in Chapter 2 and order the residents to leave the island. This power structure, which unfairly leaves the island community helpless against their eviction, drives the conflict of the book.