89 pages • 2 hours read
Paul FleischmanSeedfolks
Fiction | Novella | Middle Grade | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Kim”
Nine-year-old Kim stands alone at dawn beside her father’s portrait on the family altar. She does not know her father because he died eight months before she was born. Kim wonders if her father’s spirit even knows who she is, but she has a plan to ensure that he will.
Kim takes a thermos, a spoon, and a jar of dried lima beans from the kitchen and walks out into the Cleveland streets, still cold though it is April. She crosses over to a lot and crouches behind a rusty refrigerator out of view of the street. She digs six holes and then plants and waters the beans. Kim’s father was a farmer in Vietnam. By planting a garden and ensuring that it thrives, she hopes that her father’s spirit will know her as his own.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Ana”
The daughter of Romanian immigrants, Ana has lived in the neighborhood since 1919. It has always been a working-class neighborhood where groups come and go quickly—first Romanians, then Slovaks and Italians, and finally Black Americans from the South during the Great Depression. Ana once moved away to Cleveland Heights, but she returned to the neighborhood to care for her parents. She now lives in their apartment, which overlooks the lot.
As Ana looks out her window, she notices Kim hidden behind a refrigerator, digging in the ground. Because Ana has seen rough times in that lot since the factories closed, she assumes Kim is hiding drugs or a gun. Years working for the parole department as a typist contribute to Ana’s cynicism. She watches Kim daily, noticing that she always visits unless it rains. One day, the girl looks up at her. Spotted, Ana resolves to dig up the treasure before the girl can relocate it.
Taking a butter knife and her cane, she enters the lot and digs, pulling up three beans before realizing her mistake. Carefully, she replaces the beans, two of which have roots. The next morning, Kim does not suspect any problems. Ana continues to watch her with a new pair of binoculars.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Wendell”
Wendell is a janitor whose son was shot and whose wife died in a car wreck. Because he found out about both deaths via phone, Wendell is startled and anxious when Ana calls him to her apartment. He considers himself Ana’s caretaker, as she is elderly and the only other white person in the building. When he visits her, she tells him to look at the lot, where he spies some bean plants wilted in the sun. Ana says that she has not seen Kim for four days, so they must water the plants instead.
Since Wendell grew up on a farm in Kentucky, he understands that the beans were planted too early and considers it a miracle that they sprouted it all. Ana has a sprained ankle and cannot navigate the stairs. At first, Wendell considers ignoring her demand, but he ultimately fills the pitcher and enters the lot. He realizes the refrigerator sheltered the beans and warmed them with reflected light. He digs a trough around the first plant and waters it, but he then hears a noise and turns to see Kim. He shows her that he is only watering the beans. Since she has her own jar of water, he lets her finish watering without a word.
Later, a biblical verse pops into his head: “And a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). Kim has inspired him. Though he cannot change many of the ugly facts of the world, he realizes he can change the lot. Later in the evening, he picks a spot and clears the ground of trash. On Monday, he brings home a shovel and prepares to break ground.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three characters Fleischman introduces all suffer a separation from family. Though only Kim initially recognizes her motivation to reconnect with family, Ana and Wendell are also searching for something that will help them reconnect and heal from the loneliness and separation they feel. Kim’s isolation is unique because it presents both as a literal disconnect from her unknown father and as a disconnection from her mother and sister, whose memories of him she cannot share. She can neither heal nor support them in their grief; she cannot even express her own fear that his spirit might visit their altar but fail to recognize her. Planting becomes an exercise in connection with her father. When Kim plants the beans, she pours life-giving water over them and “vow[s] to [her]self that those beans would thrive” (4), an act of nurturing and faith that overcomes separation. Like the biblical Parable of the Mustard Seed, her act of faith is small, but eventually it transforms the entire neighborhood.
The first to benefit from Kim’s act of faith is Ana. As someone who habitually watches the neighborhood from her window, Ana knows a lot about what is going on but is removed from it. Moreover, her observations of crime have left her cynical and distrustful. Watching Kim, she thinks to herself, “I never had children of my own, but I’ve seen enough in that lot to know she was mixed up in something she shouldn’t be” (8), revealing not only her suspicious outlook but also a deeper, internal conflict: She has no family and lacks meaningful connection. When she finds the beans and sees the tiny roots disturbed by her own suspicion, her heart softens. Ana assumes partial responsibility for the beans, and the experience of caring for something again fills the hole left by her parents’ deaths.
Like Ana, Wendell has lost his faith, but rather than growing suspicious of others, he has internalized his jadedness, resulting in a sense of apathy toward the world. However, his profession as a janitor and his care for Ana show that he is a caretaker at heart. When Wendell notices that the beans have recovered and that Kim has adopted his idea to build a water trough, he realizes that his actions matter. While he can’t simply erase the violence that killed his son from the world, he can do his part to change the neglected lot for the better. The garden fulfills these characters’ needs for family, establishing themes of both Overcoming Separation With a Shared Purpose and Nurturing as an Act of Faith and Healing.
These opening chapters also establish how Fleischman will use voice throughout the novella to differentiate his characters. Wendell, for example, speaks in a working-class dialect, and his ability to quote the Bible also adds depth to his characterization, implying that he is religious or at least comes from a religious background.
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