63 pages • 2-hour read
Shiver
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Chapters 56-67Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 56 Summary: “Grace”
Grace is distraught. The only person with whom she can discuss her loss—Olivia—is unreachable on the phone. Meanwhile, each time she hears the wolves howl in the woods, her heart breaks. Frustrated, she finds the guitar Sam used to play and breaks it to smithereens in her dad’s study.
Chapter 57 Summary: “Grace”
A few days later, Grace gets a call from a shaky-voiced Olivia. Olivia tells Grace that she finally turned and is now at a bus stop. Grace asks her to come over immediately. When Olivia arrives at Grace’s, Grace gets her into the hot shower and brings her warm clothes. Olivia apologizes to Grace for not telling her about being bitten. Jack was nice to Olivia at first, but after she couldn’t tell him about the cure, he bit her in his human form. Grace is repulsed by Jack’s cruelty.
The next morning, Grace hears from Isabel, whose mom has seen another case of advanced meningitis at the clinic. Isabel drew three vials of blood from the man, pretending to be a nurse, one each for Sam, Jack, and Olivia. Grace asks Isabel to meet her at Beck’s house in an hour.
Chapter 58 Summary: “Beck”
Grace and Olivia go over to Beck’s house, where Jack is locked in the basement. Beck believes Jack will soon stop shifting rapidly between states. Beck is close to turning forever. Sadly, he tells Grace, he thinks this year is also Sam’s last. Beck has no idea why Sam’s slide has been so rapid: Beck himself has lasted 20 years. He apologizes to Grace for turning Sam. Beck saw Sam with his parents at a bus stop in Duluth, soon after Beck lost his wife, Jen, to cancer. He remembers thinking how close to a wolf the yellow-eyed child was, and how the boy would have a better life with him than his foolish-seeming parents. Beck knows this is no justification, but he wanted to be a father so badly that he turned Sam.
However, as it turned out, Sam did not like being a wolf as much as Beck. Sam likes the self-awareness that comes with being human. Grace asks Beck to forgive himself, as Beck has also contributed to making Sam a kind, generous person. Now Grace wants Beck’s help in getting wolf-Sam here so she can infect him. She tells him that Sam asked for the cure before he turned.
Chapter 59 Summary: “Grace”
Beck soaks a raw steak in cough medicine and drops it at the edge of the woods, calling for Sam. However, being in the cold air triggers Beck’s final transformation. Just as Beck becomes a wolf, Sam appears next to him.
Chapter 60 Summary: “Grace”
Sam eats the steak and loses consciousness. Isabel pulls up near Beck’s house. The girls lug an unconscious Sam in Isabel’s SUV. Jack, human for now, joins them too. Isabel drives the group to the clinic. In a secluded supply room, Isabel injects Jack, while Grace restrains him. Olivia changes her mind about being injected. She tells Grace she’d rather become a werewolf than risk her life. Grace agrees. As Jack and Olivia step out, Grace asks Sam, now awake, if he’s sure he wants to be injected. Frustrated that he can’t give his consent in his wolf-state, Grace tries to piece together why Sam turned to a human after being shot. He did it to save her. She puts her arms around Sam and tries to communicate the images of him meeting her as a human. Sam changes and asks Grace to inject him, as he has very little time. Isabel jabs the needle in Sam’s arm, but Sam changes back to a wolf before she can fully inject him. Sam runs off into the cold.
Chapter 61 Summary: “Grace”
Isabel fears Sam’s death is inevitable, since she believes the injection only has a chance of working when the subject is in a fully human state. Grace calls out to Sam, her panic rising, but Sam does not return. As she and the others leave for Beck’s house, Grace spots Shelby by the roadside, looking triumphant.
Chapter 62 Summary: “Grace”
Three days after Jack was injected, his condition worsens. Olivia and Grace drive to Beck’s house in Grace’s new car—a Mazda—where Isabel is tending to Jack. Jack is running a temperature of 105 degrees, and his fingers have turned black from lack of oxygenation. Isabel tells Grace that she’d hoped Jack’s wolf nature would save him, like it saved Grace, but that hasn’t happened. It’s clear Jack will die soon. Grace tells Isabel that they must take Jack to the hospital, even if Jack’s appearance will raise questions.
Meanwhile, Olivia hands Grace a note for her parents, telling them she’s running away. She changes into a light-footed, green-eyed wolf and prances off into the forest, happy to be a wolf. Grace hopes to see her next spring when Olivia turns back into a human. Grace and Isabel get Jack into the car, but he dies on the way to the hospital.
Chapter 63 Summary: “Grace”
Grace plans to go on a Christmas break trip to Florida with Rachel, to distract herself from thoughts of Sam. Isabel and Grace meet a few days before the break. Grace confides to Isabel that she thinks Sam is dead. While she has seen Olivia and the other wolves around, Sam is missing. Isabel and Grace go to a bookstore where Grace buys a book of poems by Rilke, trying to contain her sorrow.
Chapter 64 Summary: “Grace”
Grace is set to leave for Florida the next day. She knows this Christmas will be spent without Sam. Thinking of Sam, she steps near the woods to load up a birdfeeder she installed there a while ago.
Chapter 65 Summary: “Sam”
Sam watches Grace walk towards the snowy forest, her scent evoking memories in him.
Chapter 66 Summary: “Grace”
Every step Grace takes toward the feeder makes her think of the golden woods she’d seen with Sam. Once again, Grace is wracked with a longing to be a creature of the forest.
Chapter 67 Summary: “Sam”
Sam is close to Grace, but she cannot smell him. He watches her knock the ice off the bird feeder and fill it with bird seed. He finally lets out an audible breath to alert her of his presence. Grace turns and freezes as she watches Sam walking toward her in his human form. Even though it is bitterly cold, the cold no longer has power over Sam. Grace says Sam’s name and he embraces her tightly.
Chapters 56-67 Analysis
Stiefvater uses several narrative conventions typical of the suspense genre in these final chapters, including a third-act or late reveal as the novel comes to a close. The reveal that Sam has returned to his human form ensures that the novel ends on a hopeful note. However, the author leaves the question of Grace’s change unresolved, suggesting further challenges to Sam and Grace’s relationship in the sequels to the novel. As in the previous section, the writing in these chapters uses the winter landscape to reflect a sense of loss. Grace is constantly aware of the falling snow, the grey skies, and the howls of the wolves, all of which mirror her sadness. However, Grace still feels the lingering sense of comfort from the snow and cold that she did when it brought her Sam in his wolf state, foreshadowing the idea that all is not lost.
Over the course of the novel, Olivia’s arc—moving from a passive observer of the wolves to active member of the wolf pack—centers The Importance of Finding One’s Pack. Grace uses the word “light” to describe Olivia as a wolf, indicating both her pale coat and the ease and freedom she finds in her wolf form. Unlike Sam, Olivia changes effortlessly, suggesting that she’s finally found her true place a wolf. Olivia’s phone call also provides the catalyst that pulls Grace out of her passive state, lost in a haze of mourning Sam. When Olivia calls, Grace stirs her from her grief and sees the “delicate flakes” of snow drift by her window, “like flower petals” (347). Olivia and Grace have spent most of the novel separated from each other; their coming together at this stage underscores the healing power of friendship and love.
Stiefvater positions Olivia and Jack as opposites in the narrative—a hopeful triumph and a cautionary tale respectively—exemplifying the ways in which one’s human nature manifests in their wolf form. While Grace’s thoughtfulness and curiosity allow her to embrace her wolf existence with enthusiasm, Jack’s violence and impulsiveness carry over into his transformation, hurting others and himself in the process. As a plot point, Jack’s plight serves to bring Grace and Isabel together. After Jack’s death, Grace and Isabel bond, buying a cookbook on baking from the Crooked Shelf. Since food represents nurture and safety in the novel, the act of purchasing the cookbook together suggests the two friends find solace in each other through their shared grief.
The sequence in which Sam changes to a human at the clinic reflects the pain of transformation and epitomizes The Tension Between Human Emotion and Animal Instinct. Grace bridges the gap between Sam’s wolf and human selves by communicating her thoughts as visual snapshots, allowing him to transform, “peeling free … shaking out of his fur” (369). To denote his conflicted emotional state, the narrative again uses a line of poetry: “he / was / just / Sam” (369). The fragmented thought indicates Sam is jostling between his animal and human selves. He’s able to reclaim his human state despite the pull of his animal self only because of his love for Grace, underscoring the novel’s thematic exploration of The Power and Limits of Love. This climactic scene informs Sam’s unseasonal change early in the novel. As Beck explains to Grace, Sam thought hard of her when he was shot, summoning an adrenaline surge that made his body temperature rise so that he changed. Stiefvater suggests Grace and Sam’s bond is so powerful it can subvert the rules of their universe.
Stiefvater’s resolution centers Sam’s preference for his human form, unpacking the differences in identity expression between the human and lupine states. Beck’s conversation with Grace explains why being a human is so important to Sam. For wolves like Shelby, bitter with human existence, the lupine state is a blessing. Beck himself is at peace with both summer and winter, both human and lupine parts of himself. However, Sam has never liked being a wolf. To feel like himself, Beck notes, Sam must have access to human consciousness, words, and thoughts. Sam also despises the fact that his destiny is controlled by mere shifts of temperature. In the end, when Sam walks to Grace in his human form, he exults that his fingers remain fingers despite the bitter cold, and do not turn into claws.
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