56 pages • 1-hour read
Sisters in the Wind
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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of child abuse, child sexual abuse, substance use, graphic violence, and illness or death.
Part 3: “Fully Developed”
Part 3, Chapter 18 Summary: “When I Was Fifteen”
In spring 2006, a caseworker drives 15-year-old Lucy to her new placement, Hoppy Farm in rural Northern Michigan. On the way, they stop so Lucy can buy new clothes with a clothing allowance. At the farmhouse, she meets her foster parents, Mister and Missus Hoppy.
At dinner, Lucy is relieved when the family do not force her to pray. She meets the Hoppys’ adult children and seven other foster teens, including her new roommate, Tonya, and a boy named Boyd. Later, she is given a padlock for her footlocker, her first private, lockable space.
Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “The Countdown”
Six days before Easter, Lucy solidifies her escape plan, although she feels guilty about leaving Jamie and Daunis. She believes Daunis is cheating on her boyfriend. When she overhears Daunis and Jamie having sex, this confirms her suspicions.
Jamie tells Lucy she is a person of interest in the bombing investigation. Determined to leave, Lucy arranges a rideshare to Chicago, planning to slip away during a scheduled physical therapy appointment.
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “When I Was Sixteen”
For her 16th birthday, Missus bakes Lucy a cake, and the other teens celebrate with her. Lucy grows closer to Boyd, and he and Lucy kiss in the library, Lucy’s first kiss.
That night, a pregnant teen, Emily, goes into premature labor. Jennifer Hoppy—the wife of one of the Hoppys’ sons, Allen and a former foster child at the farm—delivers a baby boy on the kitchen table as EMTs arrive. Emily and the baby are taken to the hospital, and Lucy never sees them again.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “The Liar”
Lucy leaves the hotel to meet her ride to Chicago but her former foster sister, Devery, stops her outside. Lucy watches her ride drive away. Feeling threatened by Devery, Lucy falls to the ground and loudly confesses to bombing the diner to draw the attention of a nearby tribal officer. Lucy’s foster sister leaves as he approaches, and Lucy is taken into custody.
Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary: “When I Was Sixteen”
On July 4, 2006, the foster children spend the night together outside and Lucy falls asleep. She wakes from a nightmare about Steven Sterling as Boyd tries to kiss her. Thinking it is Steven, she punches Boyd and tells him that she does not want to be his girlfriend.
A year passes. Lucy earns her GED. Tonya becomes pregnant by Boyd and the Hoppys decide that Allen and Jennifer will adopt the baby. While sorting donations for the library in the house, Lucy finds a hidden note from a former foster child who was pressured into giving her baby up for adoption by the Hoppys.
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary: “Post-Blast Easter Weekend”
Lucy is arrested and held in a county cell. In the cell, an inmate named Lizzie stages a fight to whisper a warning to her, echoing the threats of the woman in the bathroom. Daunis posts Lucy’s bail and the judge releases her with an ankle tether and strict conditions to not leave the area.
Back at the hotel, Daunis reveals she knew Lucy planned to run away. When Lucy accuses her of cheating on her boyfriend with Jamie, Daunis clarifies that she broke up with him before becoming involved again with Jamie. Jamie, now acting as Lucy’s attorney, tells her that explosive residues were found inside her backpack and apartment. He believes someone planted evidence to frame her. Overwhelmed, Lucy confesses her juvenile record for arson, including a fire that killed Boyd Hoppy.
Part 3, Chapter 24 Summary: “When I Was Seventeen”
In the summer of 2007, Tonya gives birth and her son is adopted by Jennifer and Allen. The night before Lucy’s 17th birthday, she and Diego, another foster child at the farm, have sex. The next morning, Diego has disappeared.
Boyd claims that Diego ran away to find Emily, a girl whom he loved before but who ran away. Weeks later, Lucy locates Emily and calls her, saying that he Hoppys have been looking for her. Emily tells her that Diego that Missus always knew where she was and that Diego hasn’t been with her.
Boyd invites Lucy to his loft over the garage. When he goes to the bathroom, Lucy finds a stash of mementos from other girls and Diego’s crucifix in Boyd’s drawer. She realizes that Boyd is responsible for Diego’s disappearance.
Part 3, Chapter 25 Summary: “Appear and Disappear”
Lucy silently thanks her sister Lily for bringing Daunis and Jamie into her life. She meets with Nancy, who recalls meeting Lucy’s mother, Maggie, years ago, when she was cooking for the Central Michigan University baseball team. Lucy’s father was on the team, and Maggie would sometimes stay over.
Jamie tells Lucy he must contact all her former foster parents. Terrified, Lucy warns him that the Sterlings are liars and that the foster system can make girls disappear, urging him to be cautious.
Part 3, Chapter 26 Summary: “When I Was Seventeen”
In late summer 2007, a fatal fire in Boyd’s garage room is ruled an accident. Lucy remembers how she had confronted Boyd about Diego’s crucifix. He had confessed that Hoppy Farm was a baby farm where he was paid to impregnate girls. He admitted to murdering Diego with a shovel because he feared Diego would have received the bonus if Lucy was pregnant. In response, Lucy set Boyd’s room on fire, killing him.
After the fire, Missus implies to Lucy she knows what happened and proposes a pact of silence, which Lucy accepts. Two weeks later, Lucy realizes she is pregnant with Diego’s child. While planting memorial trees, she is shocked when Bruce, one of the adult Hoppy children, arrives with his new girlfriend: The girlfriend is Devery, Lucy’s former foster sister.
Part 3 Analysis
In this central section, the narrative reveals the full context of Lucy’s trauma at Hoppy Farm. Hoppy Farm functions as a microcosm of The System’s Betrayal of Vulnerable Children, perverting the ideals of family to mask a predatory enterprise. The setting is introduced with the comforting symbols of domesticity: communal meals, a library, and the foster mother’s promise that “you will never go hungry at Hoppy Farm” (175). These elements create a facade of safety that is slowly dismantled through Lucy’s experience to reveal the institution’s corrupt core. The Hoppys co-opt the language of a caring family to manipulate and exploit the teens in their care, especially through the operation of a “baby farm” where pregnant girls are coerced and their infants sold. The farm’s physical isolation, initially presented as a rural haven, becomes a tool of control, cutting the children off from external oversight. Mister and Missus are characterized as predators who profit from the vulnerable children the state entrusts to their protection. The unspoken pact of silence Missus forges with Lucy after Boyd’s death exemplifies the institution’s primary value of self-preservation, placed over the welfare of children.
The reintroduction of Devery in these chapters serves to crystallize Lucy’s central conflict, positioning her as a crucial foil to Daunis and forcing Lucy to choose between a past defined by cynical self-preservation and a future built on communal trust. Devery’s reappearance under an alias and her taunting familiarity immediately establish her as duplicitous and an intrusion from a past Lucy is desperate to escape. This is part of the novel’s increasing evolution of the theme Navigating a World of Secrets and Lies, tracing Lucy’s movement away from guardedness and counter-deception towards openness and honesty. Devery embodies the corrosive lessons of the foster system, representing a dark version of Lucy: Devery has fully embraced disguise, manipulation, and transactional relationships as a permanent way of life. While her methods mirror Lucy’s own survival tactics, her more extreme and total adoption of them highlights Lucy’s contrasting naivety, prefiguring the novel’s hopeful narrative arc. In direct opposition to Devery, Daunis offers a model of identity rooted in heritage, community, and radical honesty. She actively works to help Lucy reclaim her Anishinaabe identity, teaches her cultural practices, and demonstrates unwavering loyalty. The juxtaposition of these two figures externalizes Lucy’s internal struggle, framing her choice as one between isolation and integration, disguise and authenticity. Lucy’s rejection of Devery and increasing alignment with Daunis marks the definitive pivot in this section toward healing and self-acceptance.
Throughout these chapters, the motif of fire evolves from a tool of rage into a complex symbol of Lucy’s reclaimed agency and capacity for retributive justice. The fire she sets in Boyd’s loft is a deliberate response to his confession that he murdered Diego for financial gain. Having been repeatedly failed by every authority figure, Lucy becomes her own arbiter of justice. In this context, fire becomes the ultimate equalizer, a force potent enough to eradicate the predatory evil Boyd represents and to avenge Diego’s death. This act complicates conventional notions of victimhood and culpability. While it is a capital crime, it is framed within the novel’s moral logic as a necessary, if horrifying, act of self-defense. This pivotal event solidifies Lucy’s identity as a survivor who will harness destructive power to protect herself and honor the dead.
Lucy’s journey through these chapters traces the transition her character from solitary survival and secrecy to shared protection and honesty. This section contains two key confessions. The first—Lucy’s false confession to the diner bombing—is a performance, designed to manipulate law enforcement and escape an immediate threat. It stands in stark contrast to the second, genuine confession to Jamie and Daunis: “I set a fire that killed one of my foster brothers” (224). This private admission is an act of vulnerability, shattering the isolation that has been Lucy’s primary defense mechanism. By sharing her deepest trauma with people who have built trust with her, she takes a definitive step toward Reclaiming Identity and Family, and enables them to help her, framing the narrative’s movement towards plot resolution. This moment is reinforced by Daunis’s reciprocal trust, as she reveals she knew of Lucy’s escape plan. This arc illustrates that while secrecy is a vital tool for navigating a hostile world, true belonging requires the risk of truth-telling.
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