50 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ArdenThe Warm Hands of Ghosts
Katherine ArdenFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “And the Stars of Heaven Fell to Earth”
Content Warning: Graphic depictions of war wounds and depictions of suicidal ideation and PTSD using outdated terminology of “shell-shock.”
The women continue from Dunkirk toward Couthove. A shelling attack forces them to abandon the lorry and take cover. With no other options, they start walking and find an abandoned hotel to shelter in for the night. Inside, they find a glitzy bar with soldiers watching a man playing the violin. The violinist finishes playing and greets them, introducing himself as Faland. He warns them to avoid a large mirror behind the bar, into which several men stare rapturously. Faland claims the mirror will show one’s truest desire.
Laura, still sick and feverish, becomes disoriented. Then Pim screams, and Laura realizes she is staring into the strange mirror. Laura rushes to her side. When she looks in the mirror, she does not see herself but Freddie. She turns and sees Freddie disappearing into the crowd but believes she is hallucinating. Meanwhile, Pim still stares in the mirror, horrified and transfixed. Faland darkly comments, “It is often illuminating, to see your heart’s desire. But it is not always pleasant” (115).
Chapter 20 Summary: “Which Way I Fly Is Hell”
Freddie, Winter, and the Tommy walk through “Hellfire Corner” of Ypres, looking for an aid station. Freddie worries that Winter will die of blood loss or infection. They reach an overcrowded aid station without enough medics to tend to the dying. The Tommy tells a medic that Winter is German, forcing Freddie and Winter to run from the aid station deeper into the ruins of the city.
Freddie decides they should go to Brandhoek, where he knows Laura is stationed. He becomes convinced that Laura will know how to treat Winter and get him safely to a prisoner-of-war camp. They just need to hide in Ypres for the day and sneak out at night. As they look for someplace to hide, a strange man named Faland approaches them.
Faland knows they are deserters and offers to hide them in a wine cellar for the day. Winter refuses, afraid of Faland for reasons Freddie does not understand. Freddie insists that they accept Faland’s help, however, and drags Winter along with him.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Wine of the Wrath of God”
Freddie and Winter follow Faland to a ruined building. Inside is a wine cellar that appears to be preserved from the shelling and is still filled with wine bottles. Faland leaves to get provisions, and Winter begs Freddie not to trust him. He claims to see ghosts all around Faland.
Faland returns with water, food, and bandages to bind Winter’s wound. Faland asks if Freddie will “put [his] prisoner in a pen where he belongs” (130), and Freddie realizes that he would sooner die by suicide than abandon Winter. Feverishly, Winter says he knows who Faland is. Faland laughingly asks him to elaborate, but Winter falls asleep and does not answer.
Chapter 22 Summary: “And the Heaven Departed”
The women wake in a wrecked hotel. The glitzy bar of the previous night is gone. They look around the ruins in confusion. Mary pragmatically decides that the wine must have been drugged and that they should leave. They start walking and find soldiers to hitchhike with. They tell the soldiers about the strange hotel and Faland, and the soldiers say the women must have met the mysterious fiddler. The rumors claim that the fiddler shows soldiers a dream and helps them forget the war. Those who see him lose touch with reality trying to find him again.
Finally, they reach Couthove. Laura is feverish, and the resident surgeon, Dr. Jones, admonishes Mary for bringing her. Mary says that Laura received a Croix de Guerre and will be invaluable when she recovers.
Chapter 23 Summary: “And His Kingdom Was Full of Darkness”
Freddie and Winter sleep in the wine cellar. When they wake, Faland is gone. They leave and reach the aid station at Brandhoek only to find it has been bombed. Horrified, Freddie looks for Laura. He finds Laura’s supervisor, Kate, who says Laura is gone.
Believing Laura is dead, Freddie goes back to Winter. Faland appears again and follows him. Freddie devises a way to make sure Winter gets the medical treatment he needs. He knows that because Winter is German, the doctors will let him die of his wounds. Freddie therefore gives Winter his uniform jacket and identity tags and takes him to Kate. He claims that Winter is a German soldier he captured who has news of Laura’s brother, Freddie. He knows that Kate will do whatever she can to keep Winter alive for Laura’s sake. Freddie thinks, “Don’t ask who I am. I’m nothing, I died on the Ridge. Think only of [Winter]. He’s the only one who can tell you what you want to know, if you save him. You have to save him” (146). With Laura presumably dead and Winter safe at last, Freddie loses all sense of purpose. As Winter protests, he leaves with Faland.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Now Is Come Salvation”
In Couthove, Laura’s fever breaks, and she wanders downstairs to find the others. Jones, an American doctor, irritates Laura with his acerbic bluntness and lack of bedside manner, but Mary insists he is an excellent surgeon. Jones invites Laura on his rounds to check on patients. One patient, Trovato, has a gangrenous leg, but Jones has decided not to amputate, hoping the gangrene will slough off so he can save the limb.
Later, Laura tries to find out what Pim saw in the mirror, but Pim dismisses the question. However, Laura suspects that Pim is obsessed with finding the fiddler. She has started questioning the patients about any rumored sightings. Then Laura receives a message from Kate, who has heard that Laura is back in Belgium and asks Laura to come visit her at an aid station in Mendinghem.
Chapter 25 Summary: “And In Those Days Shall Men Seek Death”
Leaving Brandhoek, Faland offers to take Freddie with him. Freddie hesitates but cannot face returning to the war. He wants to “leave the world and never come back” (162), but he feels he is too much of a coward to die by suicide. Faland says he has a fee: “[E]very night you stay with me, I want you to tell me a story. Something about yourself. Good or bad, I don’t care. But it must be true” (163). Freddie accepts.
Faland leads Freddie to his hotel, which seems to exist out of space and time and is both decadent and decayed. Freddie tries to sleep, but the darkness reminds him of the pillbox and he panics, paralyzed and unable to breathe. He recalls Laura describing shell shock in some of her patients who were similarly afflicted.
In the night, he wanders downstairs to find the hotel bar filled with soldiers. Faland asks for a story, and Freddie tells him about his childhood. When he finishes the story, he cannot remember what he just said.
Chapter 26 Summary: “And His Deadly Wound Was Healed”
Laura wakes to noise and runs to the hospital ward to find every patient screaming about hearing the fiddler. Trovato frantically grabs Laura and says, “He’s not a liar […] That’s the worst of it, that he’s not a liar” (171). Then he collapses.
The gangrenous section on Trovato’s leg sloughs off, leaving a gaping wound with missing arteries. Jones arrives to give Trovato a blood transfusion. Laura is skeptical, as transfusions are new and experimental. However, Jones has been working to perfect the procedure, and Laura is impressed despite herself. Jones jokes that he must dazzle her somehow.
Laura returns to her room as Pim returns from outside, having gone to look for Faland. Laura is concerned, but Pim laughs it off. Later, Laura asks Mary for leave to go visit Kate in Mendinghem. Mary says it is too far to walk, so she will teach Laura to ride a motorcycle first.
Chapter 27 Summary: “The Mind Is Its Own Place”
Time stretches as Freddie stays in Faland’s hotel throughout the winter of 1917-1918. At night, soldiers visit and Freddie tells stories of his life to Faland. Eventually, he realizes that with each story he tells, the corresponding memory disappears.
Faland reminds Freddie that he agreed to this condition and that if he no longer accepts their deal, he is free to leave. However, he knows Freddie is too scared to leave and face the reality outside—the war, his own cowardice and desertion, or the shame that his family would feel if they knew. Freddie tells himself that it would be better to die than to lose himself one piece at a time. He then hesitates, however: Faland will ruin him, but at least he will not be a nameless body on a battlefield. He considers leaving but then sees the man he killed standing in the doorway and freezes.
Chapters 19-27 Analysis
These chapters reveal the fantastical elements of the plot. Though the ghost of Laura’s mother implies the magical nature of the narrative, it has thus far been ambiguous whether this ghost is literal or figurative. Faland’s appearance, alongside his mysterious hotel that exists outside of time and appears both glitzy and rotten, underscores the magic of the novel, lending the ghosts more concrete reality.
That the novel depicts Laura and Freddie’s encounters with Faland in nonchronological order—Freddie’s is temporally first but narratively second—heightens the uncanny atmosphere surrounding Faland while building anticipation for the moment the two timelines finally converge. The novel keeps the two timelines out of sync until the last section, lending an air of disorientation to Laura’s experiences, which become clear only retrospectively through Freddie’s point of view.
Faland himself is portrayed as charming and calculating. While his precise origin and nature is ambiguous, the rumors surrounding him provide several clues. Soldiers speak of the mysterious fiddler and his hotel with a mixture of awe and terror. Stories claim that he can erase memories, show one their heart’s desire, make deals, and buy souls in exchange for wine. These rumors, combined with his name (a French surname from a root word meaning “false”), heavily imply that Faland is the devil, who often appears in folklore as both a deal-maker and a fiddler. However, Winter is the only character who seems to understand who/what Faland is, though he is too ill and feverish to adequately warn Freddie (or, later, Laura). This ability indicates Winter’s particularly clear-eyed and wise view of the world, particularly when it comes to The Impact of Grief and Trauma. What makes Katherine Arden’s devil a compelling figure to other characters is not any positive promise (of wealth, power, etc.) but merely the respite he offers from suffering, which is everywhere in war-torn Europe. However, the novel suggests that this notion of erasing one’s trauma is as illusory and self-destructive as any more traditional deal with the devil.
Nevertheless, Freddie leaves with Faland in Chapter 23, marking a major turning point in Freddie’s storyline. Freddie’s need to save Winter and his faith in Laura’s ability to help them were the only things keeping him moving forward up to this point. Once he learns (mistakenly) that Laura is dead and at last gets Winter to safety, Freddie loses the only sense of purpose he has left and turns to Faland in a moment of weakness and fear. Unlike Winter, Freddie does not see Faland for what he truly is until it is too late. Moreover, Freddie believes (like Laura) that the world is ending, and he is so convinced of his own damnation that he elects to remain with Faland even once he knows the truth. He relinquishes his stories, knowing these symbolize his memory and identity, thus accepting his own ruination—a consequence of his traumatic experiences in the war.
Chapter 25 depicts a concrete example of this trauma. Shortly after hiding in Faland’s hotel, Freddie wakes from a nightmare to find himself paralyzed and recalls Laura’s descriptions of soldiers with “shell shock.” This echoes a previous scene when Laura and Pim witnessed soldiers driven to “madness” disembarking from a train in London in Chapter 15. This “shell shock” is what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which attracted widespread medical attention for the first time during WWI. While some, particularly military commanders, still wrongly attributed the symptoms of PTSD to cowardice, many doctors and nurses began to understand that it was a real and debilitating medical condition. These views would take time to catch on, however, and Freddie’s belief that he is a “coward” merely compounds his trauma.
Lastly, this section introduces the final important secondary character, Dr. Stephen Jones, the American surgeon who works at Couthove. Initially, this character seems like a minor background detail present to lend a sense of reality to the hospital scenes. However, he is increasingly important as the story progresses, becoming a vital source of hope for Laura. In Chapter 24, Laura is impressed with his compassion and humanity, and in Chapter 26, Laura sees Jones’s attempts to perfect the method of blood transfusions as a sign that he is looking toward the future. This places him in stark contrast to both Laura and Freddie, who have adopted their mother’s views about War and the End of the World. While Laura and Freddie see the chaos and destruction of the war as proof that Armageddon is at hand, Jones clearly believes that the world can and will move on after the war ends, which inspires Laura to slowly alter her views. Thus, Jones represents one aspect of the third major theme of the novel, The Resilience of the Human Spirit.
Unlock all 50 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Katherine Arden
