Walk Two Moons

Walk Two Moons

by

Sharon Creech

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Walk Two Moons makes teaching easy.

Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle Character Analysis

Sal is the 13-year-old protagonist of the novel. Sal was born and raised on a farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, the only child of Momma and Dad—but when Momma suddenly leaves for Lewiston, Idaho and dies in a bus accident near the end of the trip, Dad moves Sal to Euclid, Ohio with him. Over the course of the novel, Sal comes of age as she starts to recover from her grief over Momma’s death, and as she starts to separate her identity from Momma’s. Sal was very close with Momma when she was a child and even describes herself as Momma’s “mirror.” This didn’t bother Sal—to her, life was perfect. But this all changed when Momma’s second baby was stillborn. Sal watched Momma fall into a deep depression before finally leaving for Lewiston without saying goodbye. This traumatized Sal, and to cope with her grief, she refuses to believe Momma is actually dead. Sal slowly begins to recover once she befriends Phoebe Winterbottom in Euclid. When Phoebe’s mother, Mrs. Winterbottom, goes missing, Sal feels as though she’s watching the Winterbottoms go through the same process that she and Dad did after Momma left. But watching Phoebe grieve, Sal reaches some important conclusions, most notably that Momma wasn’t trying to hurt Sal by leaving, and that her leaving probably had nothing to do with Sal. As Sal and Phoebe try to figure out where Mrs. Winterbottom went, Sal also falls in love with a classmate named Ben. Sal relates Phoebe’s story and the story of her budding romance with Ben while on a cross-country road trip with Gram and Gramps. They visit every site that Momma did on her trip, which allows Sal to “walk two moons” in Momma’s shoes and develop empathy and a greater understanding of who her mother was. Sal finally accepts that Momma is dead when she reaches Lewiston and sees the wreckage from the bus accident and visits Momma’s grave. By the time Sal returns from her trip and moves back to Bybanks with Dad, she’s found closure after Momma’s death and has come of age in the process.

Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle Quotes in Walk Two Moons

The Walk Two Moons quotes below are all either spoken by Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle or refer to Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

Tiny, squirt trees. Little birdhouses in a row—and one of those birdhouses was ours. No swimming hole, no barn, no cows, no chickens, no pigs. Instead, a little white house with a miniature patch of green grass in front of it. It wasn’t enough grass to keep a cow alive for five minutes.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

Just then, she came in from the back porch. My father put his arms around her and they smooched and it was all tremendously romantic, and I started to turn away, but my mother caught my arm. She pulled me to her and said to me—though it was meant for my father, I think—“See, I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why.

It is surprising all the things you remember just by eating a blackberry pie.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

One day, about two weeks after she had left, I was standing against the fence watching a newborn calf wobble on its thin legs. It tripped and wobbled and swung its big head in my direction and gave me a sweet, loving look. “Oh!” I thought. “I am happy at this moment in time.” I was surprised that I knew this all by myself, without my mother there. And that night in bed, I did not cry. I said to myself, “Salamanca Tree Hiddle, you can be happy without her.” It seemed a mean thought and I was sorry for it, but it felt true.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Ben touched Phoebe’s arm. She flinched. “Ha,” he said. “Gotcha. You’re jumpy, too, Free Bee.”

And that, too, bothered me. I had already noticed how tense Phoebe’s whole family seemed, how tidy, how respectable, how thumpingly stiff. Was I becoming like that? Why were they like that? A couple times I had seen Phoebe’s mother try to touch Phoebe or Prudence or Mr. Winterbottom, but they all drew back from her. It was as if they had outgrown her.

Had I been drawing away from my own mother? Did she have empty spaces left over? Was that why she left?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“She looked as if she’d been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her.”

“Don’t you think she would say so then?”

“Maybe she’s afraid to,” I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe’s mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn’t see it—or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn’t want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn’t notice?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 81-82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

My long hair floated all around me. My mother’s hair had been long and black, like mine, but a week before she left, she cut it. My father said to me, “Don’t cut yours, Sal. Please don’t cut yours.”

My mother said, “I knew you wouldn’t like it if I cut mine.”

My father said, “I didn’t say anything about yours.”

“But I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“I loved your hair, Sugar,” he said.

I saved her hair. I swept it up from the kitchen floor and wrapped it in a plastic bag and hid it beneath the floorboards of my room. It was still there, along with the postcards she sent.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle (speaker), Dad (speaker), Gram, Gramps
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The morning after my father learned that my mother was not coming back, he left for Lewiston, Idaho. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. I had pleaded to go along, but my father said he didn’t think I should have to go through that. That day I climbed up into the maple and watched the singing tree, waiting for it to sing. I stayed there all day and on into the early evening. It did not sing.

At dusk, Gramps placed three sleeping bags at the foot of the tree, and he, Gram, and I slept there all night. The tree did not sing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“But for now,” he said, “we have to leave because your mother is haunting me day and night. She’s in the fields, the air, the barn, the walls, the trees.”

Related Characters: Dad (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 104-05
Explanation and Analysis:

On that long day that my father and I left the farm behind and drove to Euclid, I wished that my father was not such a good man, so there would be someone to blame for my mother’s leaving. I didn’t want to blame her. She was my mother, and she was part of me.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In my mini journal, I confessed that I had since kissed all different kinds of trees, and each family of trees—oaks, maples, elms, birches—had a special flavor all its own. Mixed which each tree’s taste was the slight taste of blackberries, and why this was so, I could not explain.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 113-14
Explanation and Analysis:

“He probably never took English,” Phoebe said.

To me that Y looked like the newly born horse standing up on his thin legs.

The poem was about a newlY born horse who doesn’t know anything but feels everything. He lives in a “smoothbeautifully folded” world. I liked that. I was not sure what it was, but I liked it. Everything sounded soft and safe.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

And just like Phoebe, who had waved her mother’s sweater in front of her father, I had brought a chicken in from the coop: Would Mom leave her favorite chicken?” I demanded. “She loves this chicken.”

What I really meant was, “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

“So you didn’t leave Gramps just because of the cussing?”

“Salamanca, I don’t even remember why I did that. Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gram (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gramps
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’ […] Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mary Lou Finney, Mr. Finney, Mrs. Finney
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

I knew Phoebe was convinced that her mother was kidnapped because it was impossible for Phoebe to imagine that her mother could leave for any other reason. I wanted to call Phoebe and say that maybe her mother had gone looking for something, maybe her mother was unhappy, maybe there was nothing Phoebe could do about it.

When I told this part to Gram and Gramps, Gramps said, “You mean it had nothing to do with Peeby?” They looked at each other. They didn’t say anything, but there was something in that look that suggested I had just said something important. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my mother’s leaving had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was separate and apart. We couldn’t own our mothers.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gramps (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Gram, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Instead, I lay there thinking of the poem about the traveler, and I could see the tide rising and falling, and those horrid white hands snatching the traveler. How could it be normal, that traveler dying? And how could such a thing be normal and terrible both at the same time?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle, Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

I started wondering if the birds of sadness had built their next in Mrs. Cadaver’s hair afterward, and if so, how she got rid of them. Her husband dying and her mother being blinded were events that would matter in the course of a lifetime. I saw everyone else going on with their own agendas while Mrs. Cadaver was frantically trying to keep her husband and her mother alive. Did she regret anything? Did she know the worth of water before the well was dry?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Partridge, Mr. Cadaver
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

If there had been a vase, would have squashed it, because our heads moved completely together and our lips landed in the right place, which was on the other person’s lips. It was a real kiss, and it did not taste like chicken.

And then our heads moved slowly backward and we stared out across the lawn, and I felt like the newlY born horse who knows nothing but feels everything.

Ben touched his lips. “Did it taste a little like blackberries to you?” He said.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Ben Finney (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway, Ben’s Mother
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. If I could toss rocks like you can toss rocks, I’d have plonked them both in the back of the head. Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting. And the lunatic, do you know what he did when she spit? He laughed. Then he leaned over and he spit.”

Related Characters: Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

“It’s not terrible,” my mother said. “It’s normal. She’s weaning them from her.”

“Does she have to do that? Why can’t they stay with her?”

“It isn’t good for her or for them. They have to become independent. What if something happened to Moody Blue? They wouldn’t know how to survive without her.”

While I prayed for Gram outside the hospital, I wondered if my mother’s trip to Idaho was like Moody Blue’s behavior. Maybe part of it was for my mother and part of it was for me.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle (speaker), Gram
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

In the midst of the still morning, with only the sound of the river gurgling by, I heard a bird. It was singing a birdsong, a true, sweet birdsong. I looked all around and then up into the willow that leaned toward the river. The birdsong came from the top of the willow and I did not want to look too closely, because I wanted it to be the tree that was singing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

Lately, I’ve been wondering if there might be something hidden behind the fireplace, because just as the fireplace was behind the plaster wall and my mother’s story was behind Phoebe’s, I think there was a third story behind Phoebe’s and my mother’s, and that was about Gram and Gramps.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: The Fireplace
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
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Walk Two Moons PDF

Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle Quotes in Walk Two Moons

The Walk Two Moons quotes below are all either spoken by Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle or refer to Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

Tiny, squirt trees. Little birdhouses in a row—and one of those birdhouses was ours. No swimming hole, no barn, no cows, no chickens, no pigs. Instead, a little white house with a miniature patch of green grass in front of it. It wasn’t enough grass to keep a cow alive for five minutes.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

Just then, she came in from the back porch. My father put his arms around her and they smooched and it was all tremendously romantic, and I started to turn away, but my mother caught my arm. She pulled me to her and said to me—though it was meant for my father, I think—“See, I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why.

It is surprising all the things you remember just by eating a blackberry pie.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

One day, about two weeks after she had left, I was standing against the fence watching a newborn calf wobble on its thin legs. It tripped and wobbled and swung its big head in my direction and gave me a sweet, loving look. “Oh!” I thought. “I am happy at this moment in time.” I was surprised that I knew this all by myself, without my mother there. And that night in bed, I did not cry. I said to myself, “Salamanca Tree Hiddle, you can be happy without her.” It seemed a mean thought and I was sorry for it, but it felt true.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Ben touched Phoebe’s arm. She flinched. “Ha,” he said. “Gotcha. You’re jumpy, too, Free Bee.”

And that, too, bothered me. I had already noticed how tense Phoebe’s whole family seemed, how tidy, how respectable, how thumpingly stiff. Was I becoming like that? Why were they like that? A couple times I had seen Phoebe’s mother try to touch Phoebe or Prudence or Mr. Winterbottom, but they all drew back from her. It was as if they had outgrown her.

Had I been drawing away from my own mother? Did she have empty spaces left over? Was that why she left?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“She looked as if she’d been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her.”

“Don’t you think she would say so then?”

“Maybe she’s afraid to,” I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe’s mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn’t see it—or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn’t want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn’t notice?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 81-82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

My long hair floated all around me. My mother’s hair had been long and black, like mine, but a week before she left, she cut it. My father said to me, “Don’t cut yours, Sal. Please don’t cut yours.”

My mother said, “I knew you wouldn’t like it if I cut mine.”

My father said, “I didn’t say anything about yours.”

“But I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“I loved your hair, Sugar,” he said.

I saved her hair. I swept it up from the kitchen floor and wrapped it in a plastic bag and hid it beneath the floorboards of my room. It was still there, along with the postcards she sent.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle (speaker), Dad (speaker), Gram, Gramps
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The morning after my father learned that my mother was not coming back, he left for Lewiston, Idaho. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. I had pleaded to go along, but my father said he didn’t think I should have to go through that. That day I climbed up into the maple and watched the singing tree, waiting for it to sing. I stayed there all day and on into the early evening. It did not sing.

At dusk, Gramps placed three sleeping bags at the foot of the tree, and he, Gram, and I slept there all night. The tree did not sing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“But for now,” he said, “we have to leave because your mother is haunting me day and night. She’s in the fields, the air, the barn, the walls, the trees.”

Related Characters: Dad (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 104-05
Explanation and Analysis:

On that long day that my father and I left the farm behind and drove to Euclid, I wished that my father was not such a good man, so there would be someone to blame for my mother’s leaving. I didn’t want to blame her. She was my mother, and she was part of me.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In my mini journal, I confessed that I had since kissed all different kinds of trees, and each family of trees—oaks, maples, elms, birches—had a special flavor all its own. Mixed which each tree’s taste was the slight taste of blackberries, and why this was so, I could not explain.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 113-14
Explanation and Analysis:

“He probably never took English,” Phoebe said.

To me that Y looked like the newly born horse standing up on his thin legs.

The poem was about a newlY born horse who doesn’t know anything but feels everything. He lives in a “smoothbeautifully folded” world. I liked that. I was not sure what it was, but I liked it. Everything sounded soft and safe.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

And just like Phoebe, who had waved her mother’s sweater in front of her father, I had brought a chicken in from the coop: Would Mom leave her favorite chicken?” I demanded. “She loves this chicken.”

What I really meant was, “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

“So you didn’t leave Gramps just because of the cussing?”

“Salamanca, I don’t even remember why I did that. Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gram (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gramps
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’ […] Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mary Lou Finney, Mr. Finney, Mrs. Finney
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

I knew Phoebe was convinced that her mother was kidnapped because it was impossible for Phoebe to imagine that her mother could leave for any other reason. I wanted to call Phoebe and say that maybe her mother had gone looking for something, maybe her mother was unhappy, maybe there was nothing Phoebe could do about it.

When I told this part to Gram and Gramps, Gramps said, “You mean it had nothing to do with Peeby?” They looked at each other. They didn’t say anything, but there was something in that look that suggested I had just said something important. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my mother’s leaving had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was separate and apart. We couldn’t own our mothers.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gramps (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Gram, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Instead, I lay there thinking of the poem about the traveler, and I could see the tide rising and falling, and those horrid white hands snatching the traveler. How could it be normal, that traveler dying? And how could such a thing be normal and terrible both at the same time?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle, Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

I started wondering if the birds of sadness had built their next in Mrs. Cadaver’s hair afterward, and if so, how she got rid of them. Her husband dying and her mother being blinded were events that would matter in the course of a lifetime. I saw everyone else going on with their own agendas while Mrs. Cadaver was frantically trying to keep her husband and her mother alive. Did she regret anything? Did she know the worth of water before the well was dry?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Partridge, Mr. Cadaver
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

If there had been a vase, would have squashed it, because our heads moved completely together and our lips landed in the right place, which was on the other person’s lips. It was a real kiss, and it did not taste like chicken.

And then our heads moved slowly backward and we stared out across the lawn, and I felt like the newlY born horse who knows nothing but feels everything.

Ben touched his lips. “Did it taste a little like blackberries to you?” He said.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Ben Finney (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway, Ben’s Mother
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. If I could toss rocks like you can toss rocks, I’d have plonked them both in the back of the head. Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting. And the lunatic, do you know what he did when she spit? He laughed. Then he leaned over and he spit.”

Related Characters: Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

“It’s not terrible,” my mother said. “It’s normal. She’s weaning them from her.”

“Does she have to do that? Why can’t they stay with her?”

“It isn’t good for her or for them. They have to become independent. What if something happened to Moody Blue? They wouldn’t know how to survive without her.”

While I prayed for Gram outside the hospital, I wondered if my mother’s trip to Idaho was like Moody Blue’s behavior. Maybe part of it was for my mother and part of it was for me.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle (speaker), Gram
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

In the midst of the still morning, with only the sound of the river gurgling by, I heard a bird. It was singing a birdsong, a true, sweet birdsong. I looked all around and then up into the willow that leaned toward the river. The birdsong came from the top of the willow and I did not want to look too closely, because I wanted it to be the tree that was singing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

Lately, I’ve been wondering if there might be something hidden behind the fireplace, because just as the fireplace was behind the plaster wall and my mother’s story was behind Phoebe’s, I think there was a third story behind Phoebe’s and my mother’s, and that was about Gram and Gramps.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: The Fireplace
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis: