59 pages 1 hour read

Jennifer Weiner

That Summer

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “This Happy Land”

Part 4, Chapter 23 Summary: “Diana”

The timeline jumps forward in time once again to a few weeks before Diana and Daisy’s first meeting. Diana has arrived at the Emlen Academy, masquerading as a university researcher. In the 1987 yearbook she finds Henry “Hal” Shoemaker: her attacker—the boy she had called Poe. She also finds Brad Burlingham (who held her down) and Daniel Rosen, Daisy’s brother (who watched everything happen). Diana does further research and realizes that Hal’s wife Daisy is Danny’s sister. She is confused and shocked that Danny, who had witnessed her rape, was happy for his own sister to marry the rapist. She learns that Danny now lives with his husband in New Jersey, and Brad now has a wife and two children. She decides to visit Brad and make him acknowledge the consequences of his actions.

The following day she parks outside Brad’s house and follows him to his workplace at Starbucks. She orders a coffee under the name “Katrina,” but he does not recognize her. After following him around for another three days and observing his heavy drinking habits and evidence of his two failed marriages, Diana knocks on Brad’s door and confronts him. He invites her inside and reveals that he is working at Starbucks as part of a rehab program, and that the prevalence of the #MeToo Movement in the news led him to expect Diana to show up soon.