78 pages • 2 hours read
Richard PeckThe River Between Us
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2003A 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.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Before Noah leaves to enter the battle on the Mississippi, he, Tilly, and Delphine have their photograph taken. As the narrator, Tilly says that she still has that photo sitting on her bedside table in the present day. Tilly wishes that they had found Dr. Hutchings in time for him to be in the photo, but they didn’t see him until afterward. He was in uniform, having joined as a military doctor. He and Noah were in the 31st infantry under U. S. Grant. Tilly and Delphine stand with countless other families as the soldiers march onto the boats.
Dr. Hutchings urged Tilly and Delphine to return to Grand Tower, but Tilly knows she can’t return home without Noah. As the boat full of soldiers sails toward the battle, Tilly looks at Delphine and sees that she is, indeed, in love with Noah. Tilly then realizes that Delphine didn’t nurse Noah because she wanted him to be too sick to fight and die in the war.
The next morning, Delphine and Tilly wait by the docks for the boats to return. The battle Noah fights in becomes known as the Battle of Belmont and launches U. S. Grant’s military career. There is no clear winner; both the North and the South claim victory, but most families consider the battle an immense loss. Before the boats are in sight, Tilly hears a funeral dirge being played by one of the boats that was originally a showboat.
For the first time, Tilly and Delphine truly see the effects of war. When the boats dock, the able-bodied carry the wounded in stretchers. There is so much blood flowing from the wounded that it flows down the gangplank. Around noon, the girls finally see Dr. Hutchings and run to him. He grasps Tilly’s hands and tells her that he brought Noah back, but she will have to work to keep him.
Tilly and Delphine follow the soldiers, who carry Noah to a warehouse where they lay the wounded in rows on the floor. Noah is awake, but he doesn’t recognize Tilly or Delphine, and he smells strongly of rum. Dr. Hutchings says he had to get Noah drunk to remove the arm. Then Tilly notices that Noah’s left arm is missing from the elbow down. Tilly asks Dr. Hutchings for the arm, wanting to bury it. The doctor says he gave it to the river, along with the rest of the limbs he amputated.
Three hundred wounded soldiers are brought back from the Battle of Belmont, and they aren’t allowed in the regiment hospitals. Delphine and Tilly nurse Noah in the summer kitchen. They bathe him in cold water to lower his fever, but he still doesn’t recognize them or eat any food. After nursing other soldiers all day, Dr. Hutchings returns, dresses Noah’s bandages again, and gives him a milk pouch laced with brandy to nourish him. Tilly refuses to send any updates home, unable to promise anything until she knows that Noah will survive. Delphine says that Calinda wouldn’t believe the letter anyway because she read death in her cards: Calinda told her that she saw a coffin coming up the river.
Chapter 14 Summary
Content Warning: This chapter depicts a death by suicide.
As Noah begins to improve and can sleep through the night, Tilly and Delphine begin to talk about Delphine’s life before the war. Tilly asks if Delphine’s father truly has another white family and if they all know each other. Delphine shares that her father has three white sons and two white daughters; according to his white family, Delphine, her mother, and her siblings do not exist. Delphine was raised to find a white man to protect her, but Delphine’s mother realized that Calinda has the gift of prophecy and can make her own way in the world. Delphine also has a brother who was sent to Paris to make a life for himself. Tilly admits that when Delphine and Calinda first arrived in Grand Tower, the Pruitts thought that Calinda was enslaved to Delphine and that Delphine forced Calinda to sleep on the floor. Delphine laughs, saying that she and Calinda were born in the same bed and sleep in the same bed.
During one conversation, Noah wakes up and recognizes them, asking for food. The girls fall on him in happiness. But in the next moment, Tilly sees that the boy is gone from Noah’s eyes, and the perfect moment passes. They soon take Noah home. The day they leave, Mrs. Hanrahan has her handyman break every piece of crockery in the summer kitchen because Delphine used it. Dr. Hutchings sees them off at the station, and Tilly holds his hand and realizes that her hand belongs in his. As the narrator, she says that he continued to write to her throughout the war until he was able to return to her.
Tilly arranges for Noah and Delphine to sit beside each other on the train. Noah tells Delphine that he will not be helpless, and she replies, “What is an arm? You have another” (105). Tilly marks this as the beginning of their courtship. They slowly make their way back to Grand Tower and then to their house atop the Devil’s Backbone. They can soon see smoke rising from the chimney of their house, and Tilly considers that moment the last time she ever felt young.
Cass runs out of the house as soon as the travelers are within sight. Tilly sees that the old Cass returned; she is thin, pale, and wide-eyed, but she is wearing one of Calinda’s black tignons. When Cass sees Noah, she grabs her own arm, and Tilly remembers that Cass felt the pain of losing that arm through her visions. Delphine runs to Calinda on the porch as Cass leads Tilly and Noah to the woodshed. She opens the door and reveals a coffin. Tilly begins to cry, howling, “Mama!”; Cass tells her that it’s their Paw. Noah picks up a hat and a belt buckle from atop the coffin, reading the insignia and telling the girls that their Paw was in the Confederate Army. Noah fought against him without even knowing it.
This is the first time Noah talks about the battle. He tells Tilly and Cass that U. S. Grant made the soldiers burn an enemy camp. The smoke drew the enemy army to them. He says it was overwhelming and confusing, and that’s when he lost his arm. Tilly doesn’t mourn for her Paw, never having considered him a part of their family. Cass slowly begins to tell them that when Mama saw the coffin, she thought it was Noah inside. Cass shrinks away from Tilly, prompting Tilly to ask where Mama is now. Cass begins to cry and says that Mama went to the river before they could stop her.
Chapter 15 Summary
At the start of this chapter, the story switches back to 1916 and is narrated by Howard. He says that Dad spent most of his time in Grand Tower with Aunt Delphine. Howard slowly realizes that Aunt Delphine is dying, which is why they are visiting now. The twins follow Uncle Noah around everywhere, fascinated by the fact that he can do everything one-handed. Dr. Hutchings, Sr., mostly naps, which leaves Howard to Grandma Tilly.
Grandma Tilly is always cooking, cleaning, or caring for Aunt Delphine. However, she always finds time to take Howard to sit on the devil’s footstool and tell him the story of their family. Howard learns to listen to her old stories and can soon see everything as if it were happening in front of him. Eventually, he asks what happened to Cass and Calinda.
Cass died of diphtheria a year after the war, at age 17. If it hadn’t been that, something else would have killed her: Cass was too exhausted by her visions and gave up on life after Calinda left. She wanted to go with Calinda, but Tilly was afraid that traveling would kill her. In the end, it was staying behind that killed her. Calinda’s skin was too dark to allow her to safely stay in Grand Tower. She was afraid that someone would realize who she was, and that would out Delphine, too. Calinda traveled to California, where she could pass as Spanish. The family never heard from Calinda again, but Tilly believes that she was successful. There was a great market for her gift of prophecy in the more populated areas.
It takes all week for Grandma Tilly to tell Howard the family history, and finally, it is time to leave. As they’re preparing for the journey back, Grandma Tilly tells Howard that Noah and Delphine never married. The family told everyone that they got married, but Delphine actually refused to do so. As she told Tilly, free women of color did not marry white men, and she would not betray her people’s traditions. Her decision broke Noah’s heart, but he was happy to have her stay with him.
The family has a great dinner on the last night together in Grand Tower, and they say their last goodbyes to Aunt Delphine. The next morning, Howard is thrilled that Dad lets him drive. They make good time on their drive back to St. Louis and camp on the side of the road again. Once the twins fall asleep, Dad tells Noah that if the US enters the Great War, he’s thinking of serving as a military doctor. This means that Howard will have to take over as the man of the house.
Howard realizes that, in a way, Dad is asking for his permission. Howard replies that war can’t be fought without doctors, and Dad could follow in his father’s footsteps. Dad interrupts and says that Dr. Hutchings isn’t his dad. Noah is his father, and Delphine is his mother. He tells Howard that Delphine didn’t trust Grand Tower or the rest of the world, so she made the family tell everyone that Tilly and Dr. Hutchings, Sr., were his parents in case someone found out who Delphine actually was. Dad says that he is proud of every drop of blood in him, and he hopes someday Howard can be proud, too. Howard doesn’t need to think about it: He is proud of who he is, proud to be his father’s son, and proud to be Noah and Delphine’s grandson. He’s excited to one day tell his own children the story of his family.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
This grouping of chapters begins the day Noah sails for his first battle of the war, examines the effects of that battle on Noah and the rest of the family, and ends in the frame story with Howard narrating. In Chapter 13, Tilly devotes a few paragraphs to describing the photograph they took and the way time was frozen in that image. Noah was still a boy, Delphine was hidden behind her veils, and Tilly was the same as always. However, after the moment captured by the photograph, each character continues to change based on the circumstances around them.
Noah goes through the most noticeable changes during these chapters. He lives through the Battle of Belmont but returns to Tilly having had most of his left arm amputated. He is delirious for a while; when he returns to lucidity, he is no longer a boy. The battle, the pain, and the loss of his arm turn Noah into a man. On the train ride back to Grand Tower, he tells Delphine that he refuses to be useless and begins courting her in earnest. Upon his return to Grand Tower, he finally fulfills his place as the man of the house after his parents’ deaths are revealed: “He gathered us up in the arm he had left, and the three of us turned back to the house” (108). He sees that his role now is to protect his sisters, and he acts accordingly.
It becomes obvious in these chapters that Delphine truly loves Noah, and she didn’t nurse him previously because she didn’t want him to go into battle. She reveals more to Tilly about life as a free woman of color in New Orleans, proudly telling her about her own family and even her father’s white family. Though it is odd to Tilly, Delphine embraces her place as a free woman of color and doesn’t seem bothered that she cannot legally marry a white man, nor is she interested in finding a man she can legally marry. Delphine’s Maman raised her to fulfill a certain role as a free woman of color, and that is what Delphine wants to do. Her pride in her heritage extends even to her relationship with Noah. Though the North wins the war, Delphine refuses to marry Noah because that is not her people’s way.
Tilly consistently finds ways to hold her family together. She “settled Delphine and Noah together” on the train back to Grand Tower, marking the beginning of their romantic relationship (106). She fulfills her mother’s wishes to bring Noah home, helping salvage what remains of her family. Tilly remains the dutiful daughter to the very end, mourning her mother when she assumes the coffin holds her. Despite her mother’s lack of appreciation for her and the cruelty with which she spoke to her, Tilly always supported her mother and family in every way possible. She finally recognizes her own value by the end of the book, realizing that she did everything she could for her mother. Even as an old woman, Tilly is keeping the house running by cooking, cleaning, and caring for Delphine in her old age.
In contrast, by the end of the book, Mama has lost herself and cannot aid her family. When Paw’s coffin arrives, Mama doesn’t have enough mental clarity left to think of asking who is within it, so she throws herself in the river, to her death. Cass reverts to the state she was in at the beginning of the book, becoming frightened and fearful again. Dr. Hutchings, however, continues to help people, serving as a doctor until the end of the war, when he returns and marries Tilly.
Calinda alone remains unchanged throughout the story. From the beginning, she is steady, supporting the family when Tilly and Delphine are in Cairo and taking care of the house and Cass. Although they don’t realize it, the entire family comes to depend on Calinda. Grandma Tilly tells Howard that Calinda’s skin was too dark for her to remain in Grand Tower, proving that racism and prejudice were still rampant in the country and dangerous to Calinda and Delphine even after the Civil War. Calinda, who was always concerned for others, left in order to protect her sister’s race from being discovered.
Previous symbols and motifs reappear throughout these chapters. First, Cass’s visions from the beginning of the book come to pass. Dr. Hutchings tells Tilly that he threw all the amputated limbs of the soldiers in the river, fulfilling Cass’s vision of “boys, blown apart, blue and gray. […] Boats burdened with them, and blood in the water behind” (22). Cass also foresaw Noah’s loss of his arm, which Tilly remembers when she sees Cass grab her own arm when the travelers return to Grand Tower. Similarly, Delphine tells Tilly that Calinda saw a coffin coming up the river. When they return to Grand Tower, Tilly learns that men brought her father’s coffin up the river on a boat, fulfilling Calinda’s vision.
Second, when the soldiers are boarding the ships to enter into battle, they sing a drinking song about losing their limbs, foreshadowing Noah’s loss of his arm. On the return from battle, one of the boats is playing a funeral dirge, expressing the grief, pain, and loss that resulted from the battle. Finally, Cass is wearing a black tignon when Tilly, Delphine, and Noah return from Cairo. Previously, Delphine threatened to throw the tignon in the fire if she saw Cass wearing it. Now, however, the tignon symbolizes that Cass identifies more with Calinda than she does with her own family and also represents the color of mourning.
In the last chapter, the setting returns to 1916, and Howard resumes the narrator’s role. This chapter serves as the denouement of the story. The week-long visit is almost finished, and Howard reflects on the story Grandma Tilly told him. When the book began, Howard couldn’t fathom being old enough to have fought in the Civil War, and he hardly knew how to listen to a story from so long ago. By the end of the week, Howard says that Grandma Tilly brought him back in time, once again demonstrating her bonding of family members and even of time periods. Tilly, in a way, began preparing Howard for the Great War by telling him about her experiences in the Civil War.
Howard feels older and has a much better understanding of his own identity and heritage by the end of the book. When his father tells him that Noah and Delphine are his parents, and he hopes he can be proud of his heritage, Howard doesn’t hesitate to respond positively. He is proud of his biracial identity and heritage and excited to tell his own children about it.
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By Richard Peck
