The Wanderer: III. The Island Summary & Analysis

15. Grand Manan. Sophie writes a journal entry about arriving at Gran Manan, an Island in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. Dock’s friend Frank meets them when they dock, and they all go to his house to meet his family. Later, Frank and the crew of The Wanderer go lobster fishing, and Sophie is fascinated by imagining what it would be like to live the life of a fisherman, while Cody thinks she’s bizarre for being excited about something so seemingly boring and laborious.

16. Stranded. Cody writes an entry in his log saying that he asked Uncle Dock what happened to Sophie’s parents. Dock replies by saying that they’re back in Kentucky, but Cody tells him that he means Sophie’s biological parents, not her adoptive ones. Dock says that he won’t tell Cody what happened to them, because it’s “not a pretty story.”

17. Tradition. Sophie then writes an entry about how Frank and Frank’s wife treat Sophie as if she’s somehow different from the other crewmembers, in terms of skills and interests, because she’s a girl. Frank’s wife calls her a “brave soul” because she’s sailing and hanging around a bunch of men, and assumes that she does all the cooking and cleaning, but none of the actual sailing and handiwork. When Sophie says that Cody does most of the cooking, Frank starts calling him Mr. Mom, and tells him that someday he’ll “make a great wife.” Later, when Frank, his father, and the crew of The Wanderer go clamming, he tells Sophie that she’s going to have a lot of cooking to do, but Sophie snaps back at him, saying that she’s not the only one on board who can cook. She says she wishes that she had handled comments like that with Cody’s sense of humor, since he ended up laughing about “Mr. Mom” and making it into a joke. Sophie gets irritated when people assume that she can’t use a power tool or climb a mast, but she wants to learn to start laughing such moments off.

18. Bompie and the Train. Cody writes in his log that he can’t figure Sophie out. She’s amazed by the smallest things, like a simple lobster pot, and will get close to it, observe it, and ask tons of questions about it. But Cody says that Sophie’s enthusiasm is inspiring; her fascination and excitement convinced him that maybe living the life of a lobster fisherman could actually be quite interesting. After he admits to catching a bit of Sophie’s sense of amazement and imagination about the fishing life, he says that he thinks she’s afraid of the water.

Cody then writes about another Bompie story Sophie tells. When Bompie was young, he lived near the Ohio River, where it was very deep and about a mile wide. Across the river ran a train track, and one day Bompie decided to cross the river by walking on it. When he got to the middle of the bridge, however, he heard the train coming, and when it got close, he decided to jump from the bridge into the water below. When he finally made it to the surface, he swam to shore like a madman. Arriving safely back at home, his father whipped him for getting his clothes dirty, and his mother gave him apple pie.

19. Wood Island. Still on Grand Manan, Sophie writes that she and Cody met an interesting woman who told them about an abandoned island haunted by ghosts, called “Wood Island.” Sophie and Cody then take the dinghy out to the island, seeking out hermits and ghosts. They visit an abandoned church and a deserted house, and Sophie at one point says she feels the presence of other people around them—maybe ghosts. When they leave Wood Island, fog has accumulated over the water, and Sophie and Cody can barely see twenty feet in front of the boat. Sophie panics and has a hard time breathing, but Cody helps her stay calm; using his compass, he successfully guides them back to Grand Manan.

When Sophie and Cody return to Grand Manan, Uncle Mo scolds them for getting themselves into potential danger. They could have gotten lost in the fog, swallowed up in a nearby current, or even hit by another boat. Sophie says she wonders why she never thought about such potential dangers before embarking on the trip, and wonders whether it’s better to worry about such things beforehand or to not know about them at all. If you don’t have to worry, she writes, then you’re actually able to relax and enjoy yourself.

20. The Little Kid. Cody writes his own entry about his trip with Sophie to Wood Island. He says that he felt the presence of ghosts when he was there, but when he asked Sophie, she denied seeing or sensing any ghosts, and said they were all in Cody’s mind. While they were walking along, Cody decided to ask Sophie what happened to her original parents, but she said that nothing had happened to them, and that they were in Kentucky. She then starts to tell a story about a “little kid” whose parents weren’t with them any longer, and so the little kid had to go live with other people.

21. The Baptism. In Sophie’s next journal entry, she describes how she, Cody, and Brian all went to a boat-building shop owned by a man who specializes in using fiberglass. Brian comments on how the shop owner’s work makes Sophie’s look mediocre, but she shrugs it off. Brian then asks: “You don’t like me, do you?” Sophie denies not liking Brian, but Cody upsets Brian by explaining that certain personality traits he has can be irritating. Brian storms off.

Later, the crew of The Wanderer goes to a baptism for Frank’s grandson. When Sophiesees the people being baptized get dunked into the holy water, she starts getting woozy. “Amazing Grace” is playing in the background, and this startles her too—she wonders where she’s heard it before, and thinks of a funeral. At the post-baptism feast at Frank’s house, Sophie can’t stop thinking about the people getting dunked into the water. At the end of the journal entry, she says that her boat family is starting to get “touchy and nervous”—the anticipation of leaving Grand Manan and sailing across the ocean is starting to grate on their nerves.

22. Bompie and the Pastor. In Cody’s next journal, he says that he came up on Dock having another serious conversation—this time with Frank—and that the two hushed up when they saw him. Another weird thing happened, too, when he went below deck on The Wanderer and found his father (Mo) crying in his bunk. When Cody asked his father what was wrong, he said that nothing was, and that everything was normal. Cody says that he’s never seen his father cry before.

Cody then retells another Bompie story from Sophie, this time about when Bompie was baptized. When Bompie was a teenager, his mother decided that he needed to be baptized, and so she got in touch with the local pastor and they arranged to do the baptism in the Ohio River. Bompie and the pastor, however, were at odds with one another because Bompie was dating the pastor’s daughter and had brought her home past curfew too many times. Bompie, therefore, wasn’t pleased to hear that the pastor would be dunking him under the water. When the day of Bompie’s baptism came, Bompie’s reservations were justified—the pastor held Bompie under water for an excessively long amount of time, and Bompie eventually bit the pastor’s hand, freeing himself. As usual, Bompie’s father gave him a whipping and his mother gave him some apple pie.