60 pages • 2 hours read
Shelley PearsallTrouble Don't Last
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 26-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “Red Stars in a White Sky”
Harrison has “lung fever,” or pneumonia. Belle says that many people get pneumonia after running away from enslavement and making a long journey, but Harrison’s case is particularly serious. Belle uses a remedy of brandy and eggs, like her mother used to do. She asks Samuel many questions about his and Harrison’s past lives and future plans to distract the boy from his worry for Harrison.
Harrison and Samuel stay with Belle and August for a while. August goes to work on “the cars,” and one evening, he takes Samuel along. Samuel learns that August works on trains, but Samuel has never seen a train before. When he hears the train rumbling and sees it moving with no horses pulling it, he is initially scared until August reassures him. August’s plan is for Harrison and Samuel to hide in a train car for the next leg of their journey to Canada. Samuel and August return to the house, and Belle says that Harrison is mentally confused. Harrison asks for someone named Belle, but he’s not talking about Belle Henry. He says he ran away with Belle and a baby, but they were caught hiding in some hay because the baby, Hannah, cried. Upon hearing this, Samuel realizes that Harrison is Hannah’s father and is therefore his grandfather. He intuits that the other Belle must have been Hannah’s mother.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Harrison’s Secret”
Samuel is amazed to learn that Harrison is his grandfather, but he doesn’t think that Harrison looks like him. Still confused, Harrison asks if they’re in Canada. His condition improves over the next few days; he starts eating more and seems to understand where he is. Samuel asks if a woman named Belle was Harrison’s wife. Harrison confirms that she was, before Samuel was born. During that time, Mr. Hackler’s father, who owned the plantation, lost a card game and had to give Belle to the owner of a plantation in Virginia. Before she could get sent away, Harrison and Belle ran away, but they were caught in the hay. Belle was sent away, and Harrison was badly beaten and never saw Belle again. Samuel asks if they brought a baby with them when they ran away. Harrison states that his parents, siblings, and wife were all either sold away or killed. Harrison also implies that he didn’t tell Samuel that the two of them are family because he didn’t want to cause Samuel extra pain if they should become separated on their journey north. In some ways, Harrison thinks it’s easier to be alone because there is less loss that way. However, he still doesn’t explicitly admit that he is Samuel’s grandfather or Hannah’s father.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Snow Coming”
While Belle and August’s neighbors have said that “snow” is coming, there is no actual snow; instead, this is a code to indicate that white people (possibly patrollers or plantation owners) are coming to search the hollow that night. This lets Harrison and Samuel know that they need to leave. Belle and August explain that they themselves have free papers and will be safe. Samuel and Harrison bid Belle goodbye, and August leads them to the cargo train. Their plan is to ride in a car full of whiskey bottles. August tells them to ride until the train doesn’t go any further; this will bring them to a lake that separates the United States from Canada. They climb in, and another voice from inside the car speaks to them.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Ordee Lee”
The other voice in the train car belongs to Ordee Lee, a formerly enslaved man who recently ran away from a different Kentucky plantation. He has hairs from his wife and two children wrapped in a piece of paper. The plantation owner was going to sell Ordee Lee and his family away from each other, so he tried to kill the plantation owner using a shovel and then ran away. Harrison has trouble keeping his balance in the moving train, and the smoke worries him. Ordee Lee has been on trains before and reassures Harrison that these conditions are normal.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Going North”
The train stops a few times. Samuel, Harrison, and Ordee Lee hear people speaking and loading things, but nobody opens the whiskey car. Harrison tells Ordee Lee that they must get off at the very last stop and should arrive there after dark. When they arrive, a man makes a bird call sound. Ordee Lee answers in English, but luckily, the man who made the bird call is there to help. They have made it to Sandusky, Ohio, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Across the lake is Canada, but there are many patrollers nearby, especially tonight. Other people have warned the man not to help anyone tonight, but he ignored the warnings.
The man takes Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee to a building. He gives them some barrels and says that when he gives the signal, they should roll the barrels toward a particular boat and load them. Then, they can hide on the boat and cross the lake. The man gives the signal, and Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee roll the barrels toward the docks. However, someone stops them and asks to see their free papers. Ordee Lee starts running but is caught.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Haste Will Be Your Undoing”
The patrollers tie up Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee. One patroller goes to fetch the constable. Samuel remembers that the river man advised him not to run if he encounters patrollers but to look for a weakness and think up a plan before trying to get away. The constable returns and orders the patrollers to allow Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee to sit up, stressing that they are humans, not animals. He asks if the patrollers are sure they have no free papers. Samuel, having spotted the “weakness,” claims that they do have free papers inside Ordee Lee’s coat. Ordee Lee takes the paper out. It is just a blank sheet with his family’s hairs inside it, but he gives it to the constable. The other men don’t see the paper, but the constable plays along and confirms that the blank sheet is indeed free papers. The patrollers let Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee go.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Keep Your Eye on the Sun”
As Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee continue rolling their barrels toward the boat, Samuel’s mother is sitting in her kitchen in Chatham, Canada. She sees some boys playing, and one looks like how she imagines Samuel would look now. She takes this as a sign that Samuel will arrive soon. Meanwhile, Harrison, Samuel, and Ordee Lee board the boat, not knowing what their futures will hold.
Ordee Lee ends up becoming a blacksmith and changing his name to Isaiah Moses to honor his two sons. He never reunites with his family but is eternally grateful to Samuel for coming up with the plan that allowed him to gain his freedom. Harrison finds many ponds near Chatham and fishes often. Harrison and Samuel also find Hannah, Samuel’s mother. They never see Lilly again; she wanted to stay at the plantation because her children are buried there. However, she sends Samuel the dollars that she gets for Christmas.
Chapters 26-32 Analysis
This section emphasizes the deep psychological damage inflicted by The Hardships of Enslavement, as when Harrison reveals the details of his previous escape attempt years ago, the author demonstrates that the character has already endured the pain of being permanently separated from his loved ones. In this light, his reticence over revealing his true relationship to Samuel becomes clear, as he fears that he might not survive the current journey and does not wish for the boy to suffer from the additional trauma that knowingly losing his grandfather would cause. The constant loss and grief that Harrison has experienced convinces him that it must be easier to have no relations. He only intended to tell Samuel the truth if they managed to attain their freedom because then outside forces would not be able to separate them so easily. With this scene, the author creates a much deeper understanding of the decades of cruelty that Harrison has endured and illustrates just how deeply these experiences have affected his current outlook on life. However, in trying to spare Samuel the grief of losing family members, as he himself has experienced, Harrison ironically deprives the boy of fully appreciating the only family member he has left in the world.
As the protagonists continue to brave The Challenges of Seeking Freedom despite the seeming impossibility of the task, they encounter several instances of good fortune to help them on their journey. In a sharp contrast to the questionable characters that the two have encountered, the kind helpers in these scenes are meant to showcase the nobler participants of the Underground Railroad. For example, August and Belle risk their own safety to harbor the two protagonists and help nurse Harrison back to health. They also spirit the pair away before the patrollers arrive to search the neighborhood. In addition to August and Belle, characters such as the sympathetic constable are meant to convey the myriad of people who, although they were technically bound to uphold the unjust Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, found ways to act according to their conscience and subvert this injustice whenever possible. When the constable goes along with Samuel’s plan to trick the other officers into believing that a blank sheet of paper is really an official document, he demonstrates that resistance to injustice comes in many different forms. Likewise, Harrison and Samuel both exercise resilience and overcome enormous obstacles to discern and seize such opportunities and ultimately gain their freedom.
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