Chasing Redbird

Chasing Redbird Plot Summary

Introduction

In the Kentucky hills of Bybanks, thirteen-year-old Zinny Taylor discovers an ancient stone trail behind her family's farm—a forgotten path that will consume her summer and unravel the secrets binding her fractured heart. Still reeling from her beloved Aunt Jessie's sudden death, Zinny believes she carries the weight of two deaths: baby Rose, who died of whooping cough at age four, and now Jessie, who seemed to waste away after Zinny showed her a harmless snake. The trail becomes both refuge and obsession, a twenty-mile journey through wilderness that mirrors her desperate need to find redemption before summer's end. Jake Boone's return to town complicates everything. The once-scrawny boy has grown tall and broad-shouldered, bringing gifts that confuse Zinny's guarded heart. A beagle puppy, bottle caps, a wooden horse—each offering feels like another Tommy Salami ploy to win her sister May's attention. Yet something different burns in Jake's eyes when he looks at Zinny, something that makes her pulse quicken even as her mind builds walls of suspicion and self-doubt.

Chapter 1: The Weight of Ghosts: Zinny's Burden of Loss

Zinny moves through her crowded farmhouse like a ghost herself, the seventh Taylor child in a family where names blur together and personal space doesn't exist. Her parents automatically cycle through "Bon-Gret-May-Zinny" before landing on the right daughter, while her siblings claim their identities through color-coded clothing and specialized diets. Only Uncle Nate still calls her "pumpkin," though his eyes often search past her shoulder, chasing glimpses of his dead wife Jessie through empty rooms. The quiet zone of Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate's adjoining house feels like stepping into a tomb. Where once Jessie's needlepoint wisdom decorated the walls and cinnamon scented the air, now silence echoes through dust-covered surfaces. Uncle Nate wanders with his snake-beating stick, pursuing his "Redbird" across fields while neighbors shake their heads in pity. The old man who once taught Zinny to identify every bird call and fossil now seems lost in his own skin. Zinny carries her guilt like stones in her pockets. She was the one who brought whooping cough home nine years ago, passing it to Rose like a death sentence. She was the one who showed Aunt Jessie that harmless garden snake, watching her beloved aunt stagger backward with that thin wail of terror. Three days later, Jessie climbed into her dresser drawer—the same drawer that once held baby Rose's corpse—and waited for death to claim her. The doctor blamed diabetes, but Zinny knows better.

Chapter 2: Discovery of the Trail: A Mission Takes Root

Behind the barn, following a clumsy frog through marsh grass, Zinny's foot strikes something solid beneath the mud. She scrapes away years of debris to reveal a flat slate stone, then another, then an entire line stretching up the hillside like vertebrae of some buried creature. The discovery electrifies her—an ancient trail, forgotten and overgrown, waiting for someone to bring it back to life. When her family crowds around her initial clearing, their excitement feels like theft. Will and Ben immediately claim clearing rights while Gretchen plans expeditions. "You didn't discover it," Will argues. "You just found it again." Uncle Nate's reaction chills her most—he calls it "the dag-blasted trail" and insists it "goes nowhere," his voice carrying warnings she doesn't yet understand. At the local museum, dusty maps reveal the trail's true scope: twenty miles of the historic Bybanks-Chocton Trail, winding through places with names that whisper of danger and wonder. Maiden's Walk, Baby Toe Ridge, Spook Hollow—each marker promises adventure while the handwritten warnings speak of ghosts and death. Zinny memorizes every detail, feeling destiny crystallize around her like morning frost. The mission takes shape in her mind with religious intensity. She will clear the entire trail before summer ends, planting zinnias along its length to create her own living monument. Failure means divine punishment—she senses God's hand hovering over her, ready to snatch away more loved ones if she doesn't prove her worth. The trail becomes both penance and proof that Zinny Taylor amounts to more than the family's strangest daughter.

Chapter 3: Jake's Gifts: Navigating Trust and Intentions

Jake Boone appears in Mrs. Flint's store like an apparition from Zinny's past—the scrawny boy who once cried when May pushed him into hedges now towers over her with rolled sleeves and an easy smile. His white T-shirt sets him apart from local boys, and when he slips free cookies into her flour purchase, claiming a "one-day special," Zinny's defenses rise like drawbridge walls. The gifts begin innocently: bottle caps for her collection, arriving in pristine condition that speaks of hours spent cleaning and sorting. A cricket thermometer that chirps the evening temperature outside her window. Jake's earnestness unsettles her—the way he lights up when she accepts his offerings, the careful attention to details she never told him she'd want. Then comes the beagle puppy, squirming and warm against her chest. Bingo becomes the family's instant darling, but Zinny spots the missing dog poster at Mrs. Flint's the next day. Jake has stolen Old Mrs. Butler's beloved Gobbler, renaming him like a kidnapper covering tracks. When Zinny returns the dog, Jake's devastation at her angry note—"If you bring that dog back again, I'll punch your brains out"—reveals depths she wasn't prepared to acknowledge. The wooden horse arrives when Zinny desperately needs a real one for her trail work. May claims it triumphantly, but Jake's confused protests ring with genuine hurt. Either he's a master manipulator or Zinny has misjudged everything. The pattern of boys using her to reach May has scarred her so deeply that trust feels impossible, even when Jake's eyes hold truths her heart wants to believe.

Chapter 4: Into the Wilderness: Zinny's Solo Journey

With parental permission finally secured—after negotiations involving safety equipment, meal planning, and promises to return every ten days—Zinny shoulders her overstuffed pack and climbs into solitude. The family's last-minute additions transform her simple supplies into an expedition worthy of arctic exploration, but freedom tastes sweeter than any logistical burden. The first day stretches endlessly, each hour crawling past with geological slowness. Without siblings to feed or parents to navigate around, Zinny discovers the strange weight of unlimited choice. She can clear trail until midnight, climb any tree, eat whenever hunger strikes—yet the vastness of possibility leaves her restless and uncertain. The forgotten can opener teaches her hard lessons about self-reliance while a lonely campfire struggles against damp wood and her own inexperience. As days blend into a continuous rhythm of clearing stones and scraping earth, Zinny falls into harmony with the wilderness. Maiden's Walk reveals itself as a cathedral of beech trees, their silver trunks forming columns that stretch into leafy darkness. The barbed wire fence blocking her path becomes an enemy to defeat with stolen wire cutters, property law be damned. Each mile cleared feels like reclaiming stolen territory from time itself. Strange additions appear in her supplies—soap she never packed, a can opener that saves her from starvation, a cup that appears as if summoned by need. Jake's invisible presence hovers at the edges of consciousness, a guardian angel who won't reveal himself but leaves gifts like forest breadcrumbs. The knowledge that someone watches over her should anger Zinny, yet it wraps around her shoulders like a familiar coat on cold nights.

Chapter 5: Unearthed Memories: The Medallion's Secret Past

Twenty feet from the trail, beneath a displaced stone slab, Zinny's trowel strikes something that makes her skin crawl with recognition. The leather pouch contains a gold medallion inscribed with TNWM—initials that dance just beyond memory's reach. Her hands remember this weight, this texture, though her mind locks the knowledge away like a guilty secret. The memory breaks through in fragments: Rose lying still in her dresser drawer coffin, that terrible doll-like stiffness of her hands. Four-year-old Zinny reaching out to touch that alien flesh and finding the medallion clutched in Rose's palm. The panicked flight up the hillside, digging frantically to bury the evidence of—what? The exact crime eludes her, but shame burns as fresh as yesterday. Uncle Nate's guilty knowledge confirms her worst fears. He followed her that day, watched her bury the medallion, understood the weight of what she'd taken from the dead. 'Til Next We Meet—that's what TNWM means, he finally admits, his voice breaking with grief that spans nine years. There were two medallions once, matching promises from a circus fortune-teller who blessed two little girls with tokens of eternal friendship. The leather pouch becomes a talisman of guilt and memory, hidden in Zinny's jacket like a tumor feeding on her conscience. She remembers the circus tent, the crystal ball, the mysterious woman who pressed medallions into two small palms with prophetic words. Rose kept hers until death; Zinny stole it and ran. The symmetry feels designed by cruel fate, another sin to add to her growing collection.

Chapter 6: The Hidden Cabin: A Shrine to Lost Love

Deep in the larch grove below Sleepy Bear Ridge, Zinny discovers a cabin that stops her heart cold. Through boarded windows, she glimpses Aunt Jessie's red coat hanging on a wooden peg like a ghost waiting to be worn. The sight sends her fleeing until curiosity overcomes terror, drawing her back to peer through gaps in weathered boards. When Jake kicks in the door to carry the collapsed Uncle Nate inside, the cabin's true purpose reveals itself in overwhelming waves. Every wall displays photographs of baby Rose—sleeping, smiling, caught in moments that time preserved while life abandoned. Rose's toys fill a shopping bag, her clothes line dresser drawers, her tiny bracelet rests in an honored place beside hundreds of letters addressed to a daughter nine years dead. This is where Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie came to grieve, to remember, to keep Rose alive through ritual and devotion. The "sweetheart" Uncle Nate visited wasn't another woman but his dead daughter, waiting in this shrine where love conquers death through stubborn refusal to forget. Zinny understands now why Aunt Jessie stopped coming—the diabetes, the failing heart, the body giving out under the weight of sorrow. In the cabin's silence, surrounded by Rose's preserved childhood, Zinny feels the weight of being the living daughter when the dead one was so clearly preferred. Two life-sized dolls lie in the bottom drawer, their hands clasped in eternal friendship. Rose and Zinny, forever four years old, forever together in ways that reality never allowed. The second medallion nestles between their fabric fingers, completing a circle that death interrupted but love maintained.

Chapter 7: Clearing the Path: Finding Redemption Through Completion

The trail's final miles test Zinny's resolve through landscapes that seem designed to break spirits. Spook Hollow lives up to its ominous name with twisted trees and shadows that move without wind. Bear Alley Creek brings genuine terror in the form of a massive black bear protecting her cubs, forcing Zinny up a tree where she clings through a night of growls and rattled branches. Lost in darkness, scratched by thorns and humbled by fear, Zinny finally encounters what she's been chasing all summer. Aunt Jessie appears in moonlit clearings, not as ghost but as memory made manifest by grief and love. Whether real or imagined matters less than the peace that settles over Zinny's shoulders like absolution. She is not alone, has never been alone, even in her darkest moments of guilt. Jake's capture of the stolen horse brings legal consequences that pale beside emotional truth. Standing before the sheriff, confessing to fence-cutting and theft, Zinny finally speaks her buried pain aloud. The trail was never about completing a physical path but about finding her way back to the living world after months of drowning in guilt and grief. The final stone emerges in Chocton's mayor's garden, marking the end of Zinny's twenty-mile journey through wilderness both literal and emotional. As news reporters ask why she cleared the trail alone, Zinny offers the simple truth: "I like it up there. You can hear yourself think." But she's learned something more valuable than solitude—she's discovered that love survives death, that families heal in unexpected ways, and that sometimes the longest journey is the one that brings you home.

Summary

Zinny Taylor's summer of clearing the ancient Bybanks-Chocton Trail becomes a pilgrimage through grief that transforms both the wilderness and her wounded heart. What began as penance for imagined sins evolves into acceptance of love's complicated legacy—baby Rose will always be four years old and perfect in death, while Zinny must learn to be thirteen and imperfect in life. Uncle Nate's shrine in the hidden cabin reveals that some loves transcend death while others must find new expressions among the living. The Redbird Trail, named for Aunt Jessie's memory, becomes a bridge between worlds where the living and dead can meet without fear. Jake's clumsy devotion and stolen gifts finally break through Zinny's defenses, proving that some boys steal hearts rather than attention. As hikers begin walking the restored path, leaving their own traces among the zinnias that bloom like bright promises along twenty miles of reclaimed history, Zinny understands that the most important trails are the ones that lead us back to ourselves.

About Author

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Sharon Creech

Creech investigates the complex tapestry of family life and the natural world, often drawing on personal experiences to fuel her storytelling. Her upbringing in South Euclid, Ohio, surrounded by a lively family and a host of friends and relatives, informs much of her narrative style. This environment, combined with memorable trips to places like Idaho and Quincy, Kentucky, provided her with a wellspring of material that later appeared in her works. Books like "Absolutely Normal Chaos" and "Walk Two Moons" reflect her childhood's vibrancy and complexity, illustrating her interest in capturing the nuances of youthful experiences.\n\nSharon Creech employs a method of storytelling that intertwines real-life inspirations with fictional elements, creating a relatable yet imaginative world for her readers. Her teaching background in England and Switzerland enriched her understanding of literature's power, which she channeled into writing stories predominantly for young people. Through engaging plots and well-developed characters, Creech explores themes of adventure and self-discovery, as seen in "Chasing Redbird" and "Bloomability." Her ability to create a vivid sense of place, often referencing her beloved Quincy as Bybanks, adds depth and authenticity to her narratives.\n\nReaders gain from Creech's bio insights into the transformative power of storytelling and its ability to bridge real and imagined experiences. Her works, particularly "Walk Two Moons," which earned the Newbery Medal, resonate with young audiences by addressing the challenges and joys of growing up. This connection is not just due to her compelling characters but also her talent for infusing stories with heartfelt emotion and humor. Her ongoing dedication to writing ensures that new generations will continue to discover the richness of her literary contributions.

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