63 pages • 2 hours read
The Girls Who Grew Big
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Part 3, Chapters 34-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Third Trimester”
Part 3, Chapter 34 Summary: “Adela”
Adela answers a call from Chris, who apologizes for their fight. Ruefully recognizing that Simone was right about her, she goes to see him. They fall into a toxic cycle of arguments and reconciliations, but one day, after they have sex, he criticizes her pregnant body, and she sees him clearly for the first time and states, “Never again, Chris” (304). She then leaves him for the last time.
Back at Noni’s house, a plumbing failure forces them to share a bathroom. Standing at the mirror, Adela studies the changes in her body. Noni joins her and speaks about self-worth and their family heritage, including a philosophy she calls “eating the sand” (308)—facing and owning the past. The conversation helps Adela to decide what to do about the baby. When Chris begins calling and showing up, she refuses to engage with him. In the quiet that follows, she finally begins to accept herself.
Part 3, Chapter 35 Summary: “Simone”
On prom weekend, the Girls skip the high school dance to throw a surprise bachelorette party for Emory. Adela guides them to a hidden, rural LGBTQ+ bar. When they arrive, Adela explains that they brought Emory there to show her that her feelings for women are valid. Emory reacts with anger and storms out.
Later, Simone spots Emory on the dance floor, kissing another girl. When Emory’s eyes meet Simone’s she wilts in shame and goes outside. Simone follows her and reassures her, but Emory insists that she will still marry Jayden. Adela joins them and hands Emory an envelope holding all the money from their jungle juice sales. She and Simone urge Emory to keep the money and use it to further her plans, whatever those plans may be. Simone tells Emory to make a choice that will be best for herself.
Part 3, Chapter 36 Summary: “Emory”
On graduation day, Emory finds Jayden before the ceremony and ends their engagement, telling him that her love for him is only a “small love” that cannot sustain her. She tells him that she has been accepted to a program at the University of Washington to study orcas. When he objects to her taking their son, Kai, away from him, she immediately proposes that Kai live with Jayden during the school year and visit her during her breaks. Jayden agrees but says that their relationship is over, and Emory resolves never to ask him to come back to her again, thereby setting them both free.
During the graduation ceremony, Emory hears Adela, Simone, and Kai cheering for her. She accepts her diploma from Mrs. Simmons, feeling pride instead of fear. Afterward, with her future finally in reach, she looks toward the ocean and sees an orca breaching.
Part 3, Chapter 37 Summary: “Adela”
On the morning of the high school graduation, Adela calls her father to announce her decision to keep and raise her baby and stay with Noni. Over his objections, she describes her plan to teach swimming lessons to support herself. He threatens to come get her, but she stands firm, declaring that this is her decision to make, and that she will keep her child even if doing so costs her her family. She also apologizes for having lied to everyone by claiming that he was from France. Her father tells her that he will continue to support her financially and “otherwise.” After she hangs up, she reflects, “I ate sand and it was so gritty” (327).
Later, while watching Emory’s graduation, she feels sharp pains in her back. She dismisses them as normal aches, not recognizing that she is going into labor.
Part 3, Chapter 38 Summary: “Simone”
The Girls gather on the beach for a bonfire to celebrate Emory’s graduation. Emory announces her plan to attend college in Seattle, explaining that Kai will live with Jayden during the school year. She passes the remaining $2,000 from the jungle juice fund back to Simone, saying that she has financial aid and will not need it. The gift prompts Simone to announce her own plan to leave Padua Beach with her children and find a better life.
The Girls, including a newer member named Vanessa, react with surprise, then acceptance. As the fire burns, Simone notices Adela’s expression and breathing change and realizes that Adela is in active labor.
Part 3, Chapter 39 Summary: “Emory”
Adela’s labor intensifies on the sand. The children wake, frightened by her guttural sounds. Simone takes charge, assigning tasks and telling Emory, who is panicking, to sit with Adela and “moan with her” (333).
Emory flashes back to her own traumatic hospital birth, then forces herself into the present. She leans in, matches Adela’s sounds, and moans in rhythm so that Adela can copy her breathing. She speaks calmly, telling Adela, “You’re doing this” (333), and Adela anchors to her voice.
Part 3, Chapter 40 Summary: “Adela”
Adela stops fighting the contractions and gives herself over to the rhythms of the birth. Following Simone’s guidance, she labors on her hands and knees while Emory kneels beside her, offering steady pressure and support. As the baby crowns, Adela reaches down and guides her daughter into the world.
The newborn is quiet at first, but when Adela rubs her back, she lets out a cry. Adela brings her daughter to her chest and introduces herself to the newborn, who begins to seek out her breast. The Girls and their children stand close as the surf rolls in. Adela holds her daughter, celebrating the value of the life she has chosen.
Part 3, Chapters 34-40 Analysis
The novel’s concluding chapters forge the main characters’ final transformations as they all make decisive, self-actualizing choices. Adela’s journey is catalyzed by her grandmother’s philosophy of “eating the sand” (308), an imperative to confront the decisions of the past and own up to one’s mistakes and missteps, integrating them into a more holistic view of oneself. This framework empowers Adela to reject Chris’s demeaning treatment, which reduces her pregnant body to an object of his disappointment. When she casts him out of her life for good, she reclaims her own agency and makes the bold decision to keep her baby and remain in Florida. With this choice, she redefines success on her terms, moving away from her father’s competitive metrics and toward a gentler, healthier sense of self-worth.
Similarly, Emory and Simone make choices that dismantle their established lives. Emory’s decision to end her engagement and pursue her education—even arranging for Kai to live with his father—reflects the fact that her own inner shift is a consequence of The Transformative Power of Motherhood. Although she remains devoted to her son, she comes to realize that she can still pursue her academic goals, especially given that the completion of a degree will help her to build a better life for her son. She therefore comes to see her personal ambition as a necessary component of responsible parenthood. Simone makes a similar decision when she announces her own departure and her quest to find a better life for her children. Together, these parallel decisions reject societal scripts that shame and limit young mothers, and the novel ultimately illustrates that motherhood at any age can be the impetus for a woman’s journey toward a more authentic version of herself.
As each individual woman makes choices that will change her life for the better, the Girls’ ongoing bond continues to solidify the power of Found Family as a Remedy for Rejection. The surprise bachelorette party for Emory is a communal act of acceptance that creates a safe space for Emory to explore a repressed part of her identity. The gift of the jungle juice money likewise becomes mutual aid that offers Emory “options,” embodying the Girls’ collective investment in her autonomy. Similarly, the Girls’ participation in Adela’s beach birth becomes the ultimate community ritual, replacing the sterile, institutional hospital experience with a far more sacred, primal event that is based on Reconnecting with the Healing Power of the Land. Simone assumes the role of midwife, Emory becomes a birthing coach, and the other Girls form a protective circle, collectively ushering in new life on their own terms, and this scene elevates their found family into a unit that is capable of sustaining its members through life’s most intense moments.
The novel’s resolution emphasizes the Girls’ affinity with the physical landscape. Although Simone and Emory’s decision to leave Padua Beach reflects their rejection of the town’s limitations, Adela’s choice to stay signifies a reclamation of that same geography. By grounding her future in Padua Beach, Adela redefines the town’s meaning by honoring the family that she has found there. The final birth scene sanctifies this contested landscape, transforming the public beach into a private birthing ground. The recurring water motif also culminates here, with the ocean waves providing a natural rhythm for Adela’s labor. The narrative thus presents a nuanced understanding of reconnecting with the healing power of the land, for this place that was once a source of confinement now comes to represent the soul-deep transformations that each new mother has undergone.
Thus, the structural choice to end the novel with a birth facilitated entirely by the Girls is a definitive statement of the book’s emphasis on female solidarity and the mother-child bond. Adela’s final realization that she is part of a group dedicated “to be what no one wanted them to be. Abundant. Knowing. Big” (309) brings her personal journey to a close by aligning her newfound self-concept with the collective identity of the Girls. The ending offers an emotional resolution while resisting narrative neatness, for although the characters’ futures are decided, their lives remain unwritten, reflecting the author’s realistic understanding of life as a series of new beginnings.
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