50 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ArdenThe Warm Hands of Ghosts
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Beast from the Sea”
Content Warning: The guide and source material depict graphic physical injuries sustained in war, intense experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder, and discussions of suicide. In addition, the novel features period-typical attitudes toward and language about mental illness, which this guide replicates only in direct quotations.
It is January 1918, and Nurse Laura Iven has recently returned home to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a leg wound sustained near the front lines in Flanders. She now works for the three elderly Parkey sisters. She is recovering from her experiences working in an aid station near Ypres and the more recent trauma of a ship that exploded in Halifax Harbor, killing both her parents. She receives a package from the Canadian Army and fears opening it.
Chapters 2 Summary: “This Fair Defect of Nature”
Laura returns to the large house where she resides with the Parkey sisters, Clotilde, Agatha, and Lucretia. She hesitates to open the package, knowing that the army sends a dead soldier’s uniform to his family. She fears it will contain her brother’s, Freddie, uniform.
Before she can open the package, however, she runs into Mrs. Penelope Shaw. The Parkey sisters regularly hold seances, and Mrs. Shaw is their newest client; she hopes to contact her son, Jimmy, who died in Belgium near where Freddie is stationed. Mrs. Shaw invites Laura to join the seance, and she reluctantly accepts. The message the group receives confirms that Jimmy is dead before mysteriously adding that Freddie is still alive. Disturbed by the message, Laura runs from the room.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Day of Wrath”
Laura retreats to the kitchen to open the package. Inside lies her brother’s uniform jacket and identity tags. Freddie’s sketchbook, which he always has on hand, is missing. In the breast pocket Laura finds a German postcard with a note that reads, “I will bring him back if I can. If I don’t, and the war is over, you must ask…” (22), the rest of the sentence blotted out by blood stains. Laura holds the jacket but does not cry.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Bottomless Pit”
In November 1917, Freddie Iven wakes in darkness. He recalls charging over Passchendaele Ridge in Flanders, Belgium, and an explosion. He realizes he is trapped in a German pillbox (a concrete fortification) sealed shut by the shelling. He hears someone breathing and discovers that a German soldier is trapped with him. The German soldier, who gives his name as Hans Winter, is injured. They lie side by side in the dark and listen to each other breathe.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Voice of the Seventh Angel”
Back in Halifax in January-February of 1918, Laura reflects on her mother’s religious obsession with Armageddon. Her mother believed that the end of the world was coming soon. As a child, Laura thought her mother was paranoid, but now she feels that the war in Europe is proof that the world is ending.
She writes letters to the Red Cross and Freddie’s commander for more information. Their responses give her little news. They claim that Freddie is missing in action and “presumed killed following the taking of Passchendaele Ridge” (29). However, if he were missing, they could not have retrieved his jacket to send back to Laura. Laura writes to her former supervisor, Kate, at the aid station in Brandhoek, Belgium, hoping for more detailed information. However, Kate’s response is cryptic and vague. Then she receives a message from Penelope asking her to tea.
Chapter 6 Summary: “My Kingdom Full of Darkness”
Still trapped, Freddie talks to Winter to distract himself. He tells Winter that he worked as a harbor clerk in Halifax before the war while painting in his free time. Winter talks about his farm in Munich and learning English while working as a waiter in London before the war. Freddie says he also writes mediocre poetry, but when Winter asks him to recite one of his works, he cannot remember any. Instead, he recites a passage from Paradise Lost—the moments just after Satan has fallen from heaven. A new explosion shakes the pillbox, and Freddie frantically reaches for Winter’s hand in the dark.
Chapter 7 Summary: “It Had Two Horns Like a Lamb but Spoke Like a Dragon”
Laura visits Mrs. Shaw, who insists that Laura call her Pim. Then she introduces Laura to her friend, Mary Borden, who runs a field hospital in Flanders near the front lines. The hospital is not a military operation but is privately funded by Mary and donations. Mary is back in Canada after weeks on tour giving speeches and fundraising for her hospital. She will soon return to her field hospital at Couthove in Belgium, and she asks if Laura would be interested in joining her staff there now that her leg wound is healed. Laura declines.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Key of the Bottomless Pit”
Freddie wakes to the sensation of rats crawling on him. Winter realizes that the arrival of rats must mean that the last explosion shook some part of the pillbox loose and that they may be able to find a way out. They search in the pitch dark for cracks or the smell of fresher air. Freddie is terrified, but Winter’s voice keeps him steady. Eventually, they feel air coming in through a small crack and start to dig.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Dead, Small and Great”
Laura has a nightmare about The Great Comet of 1910, which her mother feared was the first horseman of the apocalypse. Then her mother’s face morphs, her eyes filling with glass and pouring blood, just as Laura found her after the ship explosion.
She wakes with a scream, and the Parkey sisters comfort her. Again, they insist that Freddie is not dead and that Laura must go find him. Agatha states, “Do not despair. Endings—they are beginnings too” (52). Despite believing she is deluding herself, Laura decides she must return to Belgium to find news of her brother, dead or alive.
Chapters 1-9 Analysis
Chapters 1-9 establish the novel’s structure, historical setting, and major characters. These first chapters thus comprise the rising action of the plot, as Freddie and Winter do not escape the pillbox until Chapter 8, and Laura does not decide to return to Belgium until Chapter 9. These developments kick off the main plot threads.
The novel’s chapters alternate between the points of view of the dual protagonists: Laura and Freddie Iven. The chapter headings include not only locations, which help the reader keep track of the geography, but also time periods. While the bulk of the action in Laura’s chapters takes place in the spring of 1918, Freddie’s chapters begin in November 1917, marking his chapters as flashbacks and signifying to the reader that the two characters’ timelines are out of sync. This becomes increasingly important as the narrative progresses.
Chapters 1-3 introduce a secondary character, Penelope “Pim” Shaw, who becomes vital to the plot in the second half of the novel. However, the first chapters largely focus on the primary protagonist, Laura, whose background as a wartime nurse characterizes her as tough and resourceful—qualities that become important as the mystery surrounding Freddie’s disappearance and presumed death emerges. The first three chapters hint at these strange circumstances, with the arrival of Freddie’s uniform jacket and belongings serving as an inciting incident; several incongruities trigger Laura’s need to learn what happened to Freddie. The following chapter then introduces Freddie, the second protagonist, who more directly evidences The Impact of Grief and Trauma than his sister. Freddie’s introduction, as well as that of Hans Winter, a crucial secondary character, reveals some (though not all) of the answers to Laura’s confusion. The disjointed nature of the two storylines allows the reader to know things that the two protagonists do not; it also heightens the tension as the two plots slowly converge in the last third of the novel.
These early chapters provide historical detail that grounds the narrative within World War I. The author describes not only the battlefields of Ypres, in Belgium, but also the ship explosion in Halifax Harbor in December 1917. This was a real event in which a French cargo ship transporting weapons and explosives from the US to Europe accidentally collided with a Norwegian vessel and exploded in the harbor. The narrative and characters center around these details, which makes the historical setting more concrete. This sense of reality contrasts with the fantastical elements that will appear later, highlighting the disorienting and inexplicable nature of the characters’ experiences.
Laura’s experiences in Halifax hint at the supernatural events to come. The ghost of her mother appears first in her dreams and later haunts her while awake. Though Laura claims not to believe in ghosts, the Parkey sisters see ghosts trailing behind her “like penitent-beads” (52), establishing ghosts as a symbol of Laura’s grief and guilt; for all her outward composure, Laura too experiences the effects of trauma. Simultaneously, Laura’s memories of her mother’s religious obsession imply a connection between the war and the Christian belief in Armageddon, which highlights a second major theme: War and the End of the World. This theme is reinforced by the chapter titles, which mostly derive from the Book of Revelation, the final book in the New Testament, which depicts the apocalypse. For instance, Chapter 1, “The Beast from the Sea,” originates from Revelation 13:1-10 and clearly refers to the ship explosion that kills Laura’s parents. Chapter 8: “The Key to the Bottomless Pit,” borrows its title from Revelation 9:1 and refers to Freddie and Winter at last digging their way out of the pillbox (their personal bottomless pit). Other chapter titles refer to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, reinforcing the world-ending theme.
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By Katherine Arden
