71 pages • 2 hours read
Kim LiggettThe Grace Year
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5, Chapters 83-89Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “The Return”
Part 5, Chapter 83 Summary
The guards come to collect the grace year girls, and the march home begins. Along the way, Tierney sees the red flowers along the path, and she thinks about how the flowers—just like change—are small and happen in increments. She thinks about the punishment that awaits her in Garner County and about her family, and she hopes that “[her] treachery will be nothing but a distant memory” in time (368). When they reach the outskirts, Tierney sees a woman who looks like Ryker’s mother, and the woman shows Tierney a red flower pinned to her tunic. The guard pulls Tierney along and says that she’s property of the county now.
Part 5, Chapter 84 Summary
The girls’ arrival reveals “the bloodiest season in grace year history” (370). Michael and the other men approach their brides, and to Gertie’s relief, Mr. Fallow has died. Tierney removes her cloak and reveals a “swollen belly” to the entire county (372). The crowd is outraged, and Michael is shocked. Michael lies to the crowd and says that the child is his. He claims that Tierney used her magic to come to him in his dreams. The grace year girls surround Tierney in solidarity, and Michael marries Tierney by putting a black ribbon in her hair. As the crowd disperses, Tierney sees boxes arrive, and she knows they contain the body parts of the slain grace year girls.
Part 5, Chapter 85 Summary
Michael brings Tierney to their new home, but he is too furious and hurt to hear her explanations. Tierney reminds him that she didn’t ask him to lie for her and that she was prepared to face the gallows. Tierney is locked inside a bedroom, and she looks out the window and sees Michael chopping wood with an axe, “swing[ing] the blade, over and over and over” in pure rage (383). Michael comes to the bedroom still holding the axe, and although Tierney is afraid of him, he puts the axe down and gently removes her shoes. He tells her that he didn’t lie and that he “dreamt that [he] was with [her] every single night” (384).
Part 5, Chapter 86 Summary
Tierney’s maid helps clean her up. That night, Tierney lays in her bed and thinks about how different her life was a few days ago. One moment she was with Ryker, and now she’s in a “strange clean box, married to a man that’s both home and stranger to [her]” (386). For weeks, Tierney and Michael do not speak. Gradually, Tierney relaxes into the new routine and starts to feel like herself again. She is haunted by the grace year, and although she loves Michael as a friend, he has now become Mr. Welk: the new head of the apothecary that “deals in the body parts of dead grace year girls” (387).
Part 5, Chapter 87 Summary
A month passes, and Tierney leaves the house to go into town. The men avoid her gaze, but the women make eye contact. She visits Gertie, and they keep their conversation to the “usual pleasantries,” but Tierney “smooth[es] [her] hands over [her] skirts to show her how much [she’s] grown” (388). There was a small fire at the apothecary, and the cabinet that Tierney knows contains the body parts of the grace year girls was destroyed. Tierney’s mother asks to meet her in the woods, and Tierney learns that her mother is a usurper who holds gatherings for the women during full moons. Her mother tells Tierney that her father is a good man, just like Michael, who made sure that only one cabinet was affected by the fire at the apothecary.
Part 5, Chapter 88 Summary
Tierney realizes that Michael destroyed the cabinet full of dead grace year girl parts for her. She knows that she has to grow up and accept kindness from the people in her life who care for her. Tierney finally breaks her silence and tries to explain her pregnancy to Michael. Michael assures her that she owes him nothing and he “only hope[s] that in time [she] will grow to love [him]” the way he loves her (395). Tierney realizes that her heart is “big enough to love two people at the same time, in two different ways” (396) and that she will always love Ryker, but she might be able to love Michael, too.
Part 5, Chapter 89 Summary
Tierney settles into a life with Michael, and she starts looking for allies who might be “amenable to change” among the women (397). One night, Tierney dreams of the mysterious girl, who lies next to her and looks worried. Tierney awakes in intense pain as she goes into labor. As the midwife and Tierney’s mother and sisters arrive, Tierney starts hemorrhaging. The women of her family rally around her, and Tierney is overwhelmed with love. Tierney gives birth to a girl, and when she sees the “small strawberry mark” on the girl’s face (402), she realizes that this is the girl from her dream: her own daughter. She names her Grace, and as Tierney bleeds out, she has a vision of Ryker walking toward her.
Part 5, Chapters 83-89 Analysis
As the girls begin their march back to the county, Tierney knows that hers is a death march. She’s running out of time to make an impact, to try to make a change for the people of Garner County and the outskirts before her pregnancy is revealed and she is put to death for her crime. However, as Tierney stands before the people of Garner County, nothing goes as planned. Tierney thought she was the only girl rebelling against the ways of Garner County. She prepared to stand before the whole county and denounce the grace year, but as she learns when she looks out over the crowd, the rebellion has been hiding in plain sight for years. Every woman in Garner County is unified in their trauma and pain, and in a major act of Rebellion and Resistance to Tradition, they come together to protect Tierney. Some of the men, too, prove defiant to the ways of their county; Michael weaponizes religion and lies, just as Tierney once did, to protect her.
Tierney’s mother told her at the beginning of the novel that although Tierney’s eyes are wide open, she “sees nothing.” It is clear, in these final chapters, that she meant the subtle acts of rebellion and camaraderie all around her. Liggett takes the common trope of a traditional mother and a rebellious daughter and turns it on its head: Tierney may be outwardly rebellious, but her mother has been leading an underground society for years, hiding in plain sight. Tierney no longer looks at her mother as a woman to be pitied for her lack of understanding: She admires her mother and leans on her as they work to build a better world together. After years of scoffing at the ways of women, Tierney is humbled to see the beauty, pain, and solidarity that come from being part of the sisterhood of womankind.
As The Grace Year reaches its dramatic conclusion, Liggett intentionally leaves the ending ambiguous. Tierney is bleeding out during childbirth, one of the most dangerous experiences a woman can have, and her mother removes her daughter’s black ribbon from her hair. All signs point to the idea that Tierney is dying, and when she has a vision of Ryker walking toward her, Tierney understands that something significant is about to happen. However, the book ends before Tierney (and the reader) can find out if Ryker takes Tierney in his arms or simply walks through her. In this final scene, Ryker represents the afterlife and death itself. If he embraces Tierney, she is dead, and if he walks through her, death has passed over Tierney and allowed her to live. The unclear ending represents the uncertain nature of childbirth and allows the reader to consider each possible outcome of this twisted, heartfelt tale.
