51 pages • 1 hour read
Something Wilder
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Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Lily introduces the guests to their horses and the group sets out on the trail. A few hours later, Lily lets herself observe Leo more closely. Watching him, she remembers the summer they spent together 10 years ago. She remembers how hard he tried to get to know her. She was hesitant to trust him at first but soon realized he genuinely liked her.
The guests’ conversation interrupts Lily’s thoughts. She and Nicole try giving Terry riding instructions, but he insists he knows better. When the group stops, Lily explains that they must solve their first puzzle before they can continue their hunt. She explains that they’re “headed to one of the places [Butch] Cassidy supposedly hid money” (80). While giving her instructions, Lily remembers when she and Leo were together.
Chapter 8 Summary
Lily gives the group more instructions about the slide puzzle. She watches as Leo, Bradley, Terry, and Walter each try to solve it. Leo finishes first. Watching him, Lily realizes that Leo hasn’t changed as much as she thought. The group resumes their conversation and Leo’s friends suddenly realize Lily is the girl Leo fell in love with years prior. Lily confirms that she and Leo were together and then shuts down the conversation.
Chapter 9 Summary
After dinner, the group sits around the fire. Terry notices Duke’s journal and comments on it. Lily ends the conversation and everyone but Leo goes to bed. Lily decides to sit with him by the fire so they can talk. They struggle to start their conversation. Finally, Lily reveals that Duke sold the ranch shortly after Leo left Wyoming. Leo reveals that his mom died from her injuries shortly after he returned home. He apologizes for being abrupt with her on the phone when she called him, explaining that he was orchestrating his mom’s cremation at the time. He tried calling her several times afterward and left a few messages with Duke but never heard from Lily.
Lily is shocked. She never got Leo’s messages and didn’t know about his mom’s death. She hadn’t been talking to Duke at the time and wonders what would have happened if she’d known the truth. She pushes the thoughts aside. Leo tells her about Cora and admits this is the first time he’s been on his own in a while. The two also discuss the treasure hunt, making jokes about the rest of the trip. Leo tries asking about Duke’s fate, but Nicole’s shouts interrupt them.
Nicole is yelling at Terry for urinating in front of her tent. After the altercation, Leo and Lily are alone together again. Lily studies him and realizes that they lost their chance to be together. Leo says goodnight and Lily assumes that he’s thinking the same thing.
Chapter 10 Summary
For the next two days, the group continues their adventure. Lily and Leo don’t get the chance to talk again. Terry becomes increasingly demanding. He repeatedly defies Lily and Nicole, insisting he has better routes they can take.
The group reaches Maze Overlook. Leo is amazed by the view. The group sets up camp for the night and starts solving their next puzzle. The men tease Leo about Lily while they’re working. Leo dismisses their jeering. When Lily and Nicole rejoin the men, they realize that Terry is missing. He reappears with Duke’s journal, which he stole from Lily. An argument ensues. Terry insists that he’s taking the journal and Nicole into the desert to find Duke’s allegedly hidden treasure. He whips out a gun and holds it to Nicole’s head. Everyone begs him to put the gun down. Leo reaches for Lily to protect her while Bradley races at Terry to grab the gun. The two men scuffle and Terry goes flying over the edge of the cliff. Nobody moves for several seconds. Finally they look over the ledge and see “a tiny puff of dirt [rise] up from the distant ground” (117).
Chapter 11 Summary
Frantic, Bradley breaks out into hysterical yelling. He grabs Terry’s gun and starts swinging it around at the group. Leo talks him down, finally convincing him to let go of the gun. The group tries to decide what to do. Nicole argues that Bradley pushed Terry over the cliff but Bradley insists that he fell. They all agree that they should tell the authorities it was an accident. The conversation shifts to Duke’s journal, and they decide that Terry must have planned to take the journal because he wanted to find the treasure for himself. Bradley admits that Terry planned the whole trip and had known about Duke, his maps, and treasures. Leo flips through the journal, discovering a riddle at the back of the book. The group decides it must be the key to where Duke’s treasure is hidden. They guess that he found Butch Cassidy’s buried money and hid it again for someone to find.
Chapter 12 Summary
The group tries to decide if they should go in search of Cassidy’s money. They calculate that the treasure must be worth roughly $10 million. Lily tells them the story of Butch Cassidy and explains why he hid the money and how Duke became interested in finding it. The group decides that they can leave Terry’s body and go find the treasure. When they return home, they’ll tell the authorities that Terry wandered off and they were looking for him. Lily hesitates and the group agrees that they’ll go with the plan if Lily agrees. Lily says she’ll make her decision in the morning.
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
The events of Chapters 7 through 12 amplify the narrative tension, accelerate the narrative pacing, and intensify the narrative stakes. Throughout these chapters, Lily, Nicole, Leo, Bradley, Terry, and Walter are traveling along the Outlaw Trail. The official start of their desert adventure ushers the characters out into the unknown. The environmental aspects of their new surroundings in turn incite new conflicts between the characters. Indeed, as they set “out on the trail” (75), the narrator remarks that “the landscape swallow[s] up the camp behind them” and “that every step [takes] them farther and farther from the safety of their everyday lives. No phones, no computers, nobody else to depend on but Lily and Nicole” (76). These scenic and atmospheric details underscore the symbolic nature of the characters’ setting. They are venturing out into a landscape with which most of the group is unfamiliar. They therefore must trust their leaders as they are leaving their comforts behind. As a result, the more unfamiliar and wild the terrain becomes, the more unfamiliar and wild the characters’ behaviors become. In particular, Terry’s decision to steal the journal, Terry’s attempt to kidnap Nicole, Terry’s death, and Terry’s and Bradley’s decisions to threaten the group at gunpoint render the narrative mood hostile and unwelcoming. These events in turn affect the main characters’ internal worlds and again ask them to reconcile their past and present lives so that they can focus on their common goal.
In the past, Leo and Lily were isolated in their young romance on Wilder Ranch. By way of contrast, Leo and Lily are surrounded by an increased number of interpersonal conflicts in the narrative present. Their individual perspectives reveal that they are each curious about the other. They want to understand who they’ve become since they last met and to understand what they’ve experienced as individuals since their parting. For example, in Chapter 7, the narrator says that it is a “couple of hours into the ride” before Lily can “take [Leo] in without her stomach clenching” (76). In the remainder of the passage, the narrator details Leo’s physicality via Lily’s point of view. This moment captures Lily’s eagerness to get to know Leo again and to remember who he was when they were together. Parallel passages occur in Leo’s chapters, where Leo similarly observes Lily’s physicality and mannerisms and becomes overwhelmed with memories of what they shared years prior. However, Leo and Lily aren’t free to act on their feelings or to reconcile their differences due to their circumstantial situation. Lily is meant to be guiding her guests and is worried that Leo will distract her. Meanwhile, Leo is supposed to be spending time with his friends and wants to respect Lily’s space and leadership position. Therefore, the characters’ macro and micro settings complicate their relationship in the present and challenge their ability to relate to one another as new people. These dynamics underscore the difficulty of Reconciling the Past and Present, particularly when the individual’s life circumstances and relationships have changed.
Meanwhile, Terry’s death, Bradley’s outburst, and the group’s treasure hunt develop the novel’s exploration of Love, Trust, and Forgiveness. Although no one cared for Terry and Terry proved himself to be a troublemaker, his death marks a pivotal turn in the narrative trajectory and the characters’ group dynamic. His death particularly challenges the group to work together in order to make decisions on behalf of the collective. Each character has a different stake in seeking out Duke’s buried treasure, but Lily is most emotionally conflicted by this prospective hunt. These conflicts are inspired by the group’s hesitance to trust one another and their yet unresolved differences. The unresolved conflicts at the end of this section foreshadow new relational complications between Lily, Nicole, Leo, Walter, and Bradley as they must make difficult decisions about their fate together.
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