39 pages 1 hour read

Tim O'Brien

In the Lake of the Woods

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994

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Chapters 19-24

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 19 Summary: What Was Found

The search party includes nearly a hundred volunteers, search planes, and boats; they search over 600 square miles of lake and woods, but find no sign of Kathy or the boat.

 

John picks Pat up when she arrives. They talk, and they both agree to get a boat to go out and search tomorrow. They are uneasy but polite with one another. Pat doesn’t understand what Kathy would have been doing out on the lake in a boat by herself, since Kathy isn’t an outdoorswoman.

 

She confronts John about being a war criminal and tells John that Kathy was creeped out by John’s spying and secrecy. She asks him if he did something to Kathy. He says no.

 

That night he is drawn back to the boathouse; he knows something happened there, but he cannot remember what. He cannot imagine Kathy being strong enough to get the boat out and carry the engine to it as well. When he returns to the cabin, Pat is there watching him.

Chapter 20 Summary: Evidence

This chapter contains quotations from court martial testimony, specifically testimony from Richard Thinbill that directly implicates John in the killing of the old man with the hoe. Eleanor Wade reveals that John’s father killed himself; he hung himself in the garage.