110 pages • 3 hours read
Varian JohnsonThe Parker Inheritance
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A 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 25-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Candice and Brandon struggle to make more headway with their internet research, wasting almost a whole Tuesday without finding anything. In the afternoon, Brandon suggests reaching out to the other people who received a letter, but Candice shuts the idea down, arguing that “if they did have information, they should have used it to help my grandma” (143). Brandon goes along but suggests that eventually they will have to talk to an adult about the puzzle.
The next day, Candice begins reading The Westing Game before Brandon calls and invites her over to interview someone. Mr. Gibbs has his girlfriend, Ms. Kathy, at the house, and as an alumna, she is willing to talk about Perkins High with them. Candice has brought over the 1957 yearbook, so Ms. Kathy flips through the pages, soon identifying Ellie Farmer, a girl who appears in a photo with Siobhan Washington. Ms. Kathy says that she’ll work to “get her number” (146). Before they end the interview, Ms. Kathy reflects on the difference between how high school was perceived in the 1970s versus how it is seen now; Mr. Gibbs explains, “[Back] then, especially for black folks, high school was our college” (147-148).
Chapter 26 Summary
Ellie Farmer agrees to meet with Candice and Brandon, so Tori drives them out to visit her. As they travel, Tori asks Candice about what is “really going on with all this research” (149). Candice is nervous but explains anyway. Tori isn’t all the way convinced but expresses how happy she is that Brandon is keeping busy since his best friend, Quincy, isn’t home for the summer. While they talk, Candice comments on Tori slowing down; Tori explains that she gets nervous driving by police since there are many cases of “black people getting killed or hurt by the cops” (151). Tori also tells Candice about what happened with Mr. Rittenhauer: their moms met with the superintendent privately.
When they arrive at the house, Ellie Farmer is welcoming. She answers all of their questions about Siobhan, telling them about Siobhan’s skills academically and on the tennis court. Next, Brandon asks about the tennis game between Perkins and Wallace. Ellie explains that the boys from Perkins won, but “Marion Allen didn’t like that a whole bunch of [people] knew about the game” (155) and retaliated violently against Coach Dub, including threatening Siobhan.
Candice and Brandon also ask if Ellie knew anyone named James Parker, but she isn’t able to give them any more information. Before they go, Ellie grabs Candice, asking, “[Where] did you get that?!” (158) Candice realizes Ellie is referring to the bracelet that she wears from her grandmother. Ellie explains that the bracelet belonged to Siobhan Washington—what Candice had thought was an “MS” was actually the initials “SW” (159). As Candice, Brandon, and Tori drive back to Lambert, they discuss the revelations that they have just found out, wondering where Candice’s grandmother had gotten Siobhan’s bracelet.
Chapter 27 Summary
Back in 1957, Chip Douglas gets in a short altercation with some of the white male students at Wallace because he’s going to “help the coloreds” (162) at Perkins. Chip, who has been in college for a year, can’t play on the all-white tennis team, though the other boys would like him to.
As Chip heads over to Perkins, he sees Siobhan walking down Darling Avenue, the center of the predominantly Black neighborhood. Chip feels enamored of Siobhan, wanting “to be anywhere she was” (164), and he pulls over to talk to her. When he comments on her wearing a new bracelet, she retorts back that he started shaving. They walk down the street together and Siobhan repeatedly tries to get Chip to leave her. Chip asks a “tall, lanky… light-skinned” (165) boy to go buy them a couple of Cokes. When the boy brings back the cokes, Siobhan again entreats Chip to leave, and he finally does, hoping that he’ll have “another chance to prove his worth” (166).
Chip makes it to Perkins where practice has already started. Chip gives his father some suggestions on what the boys need to do differently. They begin to argue about Chip’s crush on Siobhan, with Coach Douglas arguing that Chip needs to leave her alone. Coach Douglas tells Chip that he will “never understand what it means to be a Negro” (170), and they end the conversation as Coach Dub comes over. The men talk about a player named Reggie Bradley whom Coach Dub doesn’t want playing for him because Reggie has been dating Siobhan. With a shock, Chip realizes that Reggie is the boy “he had asked to buy two Cokes” (172).
Chapters 25-27 Analysis
Varian Johnson includes several scenes in The Parker Inheritance to illustrate the societal issue of white people not being able to truly understand the discrimination that Black people face, both historically and in the present day. Earlier in the novel, Candice and Brandon’s interaction with Mr. Rittenhauer forces Candice to realize that white people will not always perceive her positively because of their biases. In Chapter 27, Chip Douglas has a difficult conversation with his father that challenges him to think differently about how he perceives the Black people in his life. He is shocked to realize that Reggie Bradley was the young man whom he condescendingly asked to buy him and Siobhan two Cokes. Similarly, when Coach Douglas asks Chip why he can’t address Coach Dub as “Mister… Sir… or even Coach” (172), Chip struggles with realizing that he has not behaved as respectfully as he thought. Though much of the novel centers on the experiences of two young Black people, Johnson’s inclusion of these moments helps illustrate ways that racism functions to support white people to continue behaving in racist ways—racism is not confined to the violent, explicit actions of characters like Marion Allen, it is also an underlying part of the lives of other white characters like Chip and Mr. Rittenhauer—the whites who benefit from their own biases cannot see it, but it subtly robs agency from people of color every day.
A critical aspect of the structure of The Parker Inheritance is Johnson’s choice to use multiple perspectives to tell the story. Although many of the chapters focus on Candice and Brandon, there are a number of sections that follow other people involved in the narrative, including Coach Dub, Coach Douglas, Chip, and Siobhan. Through these additional perspectives, Johnson deepens the connections between different time periods and characters. In addition, the use of multiple perspectives makes it easier to follow the different ways that the Lambert mystery impacts characters based on their age, gender, and race. Candice and Brandon are necessarily limited in their understanding of the motivations behind what has happened in Lambert, but Johnson chooses to give readers a more complex view of the web of relationships and events that leads to the letter and inheritance.
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