46 pages • 1 hour read
Kirby LarsonHattie Big Sky
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A 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 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “December 19, 1917”
Content Warning: This source material contains xenophobia. This source material also contains references to domestic violence and the loss of children.
Sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks writes a letter to her friend Charlie Hawley who has enlisted to fight in World War I. Hattie remembers how she said goodbye to Charlie at the train station, giving him a wishing stone before he left. Charlie taught her that throwing wishing stones over her shoulder would help her dreams come true.
Hattie goes downstairs to the parlor. Aunt Ivy says that Iantha Wells wants to hire Hattie to work at her boarding house. Uncle Holt says that Hattie should finish school first, and Hattie feels relieved. Hattie thinks about her parents. Hattie’s father, a miner, died from coal dust inhalation. After Hattie’s mother died of pneumonia, Hattie came to live with Aunt Ivy when she was 13, even though Uncle Holt was a distant cousin. Since then, Aunt Ivy has done everything in her power to remind Hattie of her failings.
Uncle Holt gives Hattie a letter from Montana. Inside the envelope, Hattie finds two letters. The first letter is from a woman named 
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