53 pages • 1-hour read
Swift River
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Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “1987”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of substance use, racism, graphic violence, death, sexual content, and child sexual abuse.
Shelly picks Diamond up for their last driving session, during which they intend to return to the house of the Black family they previously saw. However, when she gets the car, Diamond is surprised to find that Mr. Jimmy and Shelly are not alone: There is a man with them. Ma also sees the car and accuses Diamond of keeping secrets; she does not believe that these are her co-workers from the Tee Pee Motel picking her up. Before she leaves, Diamond gives Ma a letter from Lena offering to testify in court on their behalf. Ma is hurt that Diamond is in contact with Lena.
Rick, the man in the car, was a student of Mr. Jimmy’s and is several years older than Diamond. The four head to the Putt Around for some mini golf. While they play, Shelly confesses that she told Mr. Jimmy about her and Diamond’s secret plan to leave for Florida. Shelly later admits that her mother will not let them stay with her and she plans to go with Mr. Jimmy instead.
When the group returns to the family’s house, Shelly, Mr. Jimmy, and Rick all comment on the physical appearance of the mother and daughter, who are in the front yard. Diamond realizes that the mother knows they are all staring. When the father comes out, Diamond confirms that he is a stranger and that her Pop is dead.
At Torchlight Mobile Home Park, the group drinks and sits around a fire. Rick invites Diamond into his bedroom while Mr. Jimmy and Shelly have sex in the car.
Chapter 22 Summary: “August 24, 1987”
Lena writes to Diamond, mentioning that she is happy that Diamond is starting to feel the connections between the generations of her family, like knowing about a special tree that Clara loved and where Diamond’s parents were married.
Lena also reveals a secret, explaining that she did not attend the wedding because she is a lesbian. Her “traveling partner,” Tilly, is her partner. At the time of the wedding, Lena was with a different woman and did not feel comfortable telling the Newberry family about her orientation. However, she also did not know how to tell her girlfriend, Laila, that she did not want her to come, and did not want to have to choose between Pop and her girlfriend. Ultimately, she left without Laila, finding out while on the road that Laila had decided to move out and break up with her. Lena did not have the heart to continue to the wedding, so she believes she let down both Robbie and Laila that day. Lena was never able to explain to Robbie why she was not there and it broke the relationship.
Alongside the letter, Lena includes the record of all the babies Clara delivered, as well as the deed to Aunt Clara and Jacques’s property in Canada, which she says belongs to Diamond now.
Chapter 23 Summary: “June 17, 1954”
In this letter to Sweetie, Clara writes about her preparations for Robbie’s arrival. Jacques has gone to Canada to defend his property against government encroachment. He wants Clara to move north with him and open a clinic there.
Chapter 24 Summary
Diamond speaks directly to Ma from some point in the future, looking back on their day in court, when they finally received the declaration of Pop’s death. After the difficult journey to reach that point, the judge’s action seemed anticlimactic and routine.
After they left the courthouse, Diamond showed Ma her new driver’s license, and Ma suddenly understood all the secrets of the summer. To get home, they hitchhiked one more time with two men, one of whom turned out to be related to people that Aunt Clara delivered; Ma thus learned that Diamond had the logbook.
Tension rose after the men, learning who Ma and Diamond were, remarked on the rumor that Pop had started over with a new family. Distraught and angry, Ma insisted that Pop was dead. The men did not take the most direct route to the women’s house, and Diamond’s memory of how she and Ma ended up out of the car and on the side of the road is fuzzy; however, she remembers Ma telling her to jump from the moving car. Injured, they walked to a payphone and called Shelly to pick them up and take them to the hospital. Diamond reflects that Shelly did eventually leave Swift River but had a difficult time settling anywhere.
After returning home, Diamond told Ma that she was planning a trip with Lena and showed her the deed to the land in Canada. Ma in turn showed Diamond two shiny new bikes she had purchased for them by borrowing money from a friend.
Chapter 25 Summary: “August 20, 1967”
Clara sends a short note with a picture of a dock leading onto a lake. She says she misses Sweetie and signs the note “Dr. Clara Da Costa.”
Chapters 21-25 Analysis
Chapter 21 finishes a storyline begun in Chapter 17, where Shelly identifies a Black man as possibly being Diamond’s Pop. The episode serves partly to highlight the racism of Swift River; the townspeople view Black Americans as so interchangeable that they assume any Black man could be Diamond’s father. Moreover, amid the racially homogenous environment of the town, Diamond’s companions treat the man and his family as a spectacle. This dehumanizes them further, as Diamond explains: “I am on one side, the side of the head-turners in cars, and that family is on the other. I look at Shelly’s loving face, checking on me to make sure I’m as stoked as she is” (244). All of this contributes to Diamond’s shame when they follow the man to his house. However, the sight of the man’s family also has a positive impact on Diamond, showing her the kind of community that is possible and affirming her desire to leave the town: “I know that I want to be in that yard with that family more than anything in the world. I want to fast-forward to Florida” (244). Diamond longs for the happiness that the Black family appears to have and wants to escape the racism that Swift River represents once and for all.
The Importance of Family Roots is evident in this section as well, particularly in explaining Pop’s backstory. Clara writes to Sweetie, “I’m going to tell him [Pop] that he was so loved by God, he got three women to take care of him, to teach him, each passing him along like a precious gift, one to the next, each giving him something special that he’ll surely need on his journey to greatness” (271). The passage particularly highlights the role of Black women in safeguarding their families and their families’ legacies, suggesting that the strength that Clara passed on to Pop helped him to endure for as long as he did in Swift River. By reading the letters, Diamond strengthens her own connection to her family roots and becomes part of this community of women.
The final chapter underscores the importance of family connection by giving that connection material weight. The capstone of Diamond’s narrative is that Clara was able to achieve her dream of living free on Jacques’s inherited Canadian land and become a doctor. Diamond’s dream is also fulfilled thanks to the inheritance of that land as well. Not only did Lena connect Diamond with the importance of family roots, but she also created a way for Diamond to become the beneficiary of Clara’s intended gift. Too late for Pop, the next generation can benefit from her success.
If Pop’s absence makes the conclusion somewhat bittersweet, so too do two fractured family relationships. For instance, though Clara continues to write to Sweetie, Sweetie stops opening her letters due to her heartbreak over Clara moving away. Diamond and Ma appear similarly estranged. In Chapter 24, Diamond directly addresses Ma from an unknown vantage point in the future. With the benefit of distance, she demonstrates compassion for Ma and regret that she was unable to show compassion when her mother showed her the bikes because she was so desperate to leave Swift River. The bikes become a symbol of the miscommunication between mother and daughter, who love each other but are not fully able to understand one another’s perspectives.
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