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Walk Two Moons · Garden Heights
Part 7
for Walk Two Moons · Part 7 · Chapters 34–39
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 7
Old Faithful erupts, the girls track down Mike Bickle, and Mrs. Winterbottom comes home with the truth about her son.
Old FaithfulAt Old Faithful, the famous geyser gives a feeble spurt, then erupts in a roaring column, and Gram is so delighted she cannot stop smiling; afterward Gramps points the car west and vows to reach the Idaho border by nightfall. As the road climbs into steep, winding mountain country, Sal grips her seat and Gram asks her to go on with Phoebe's story.
Finding MikeThe girls turn detective. Phoning every Bickle in the listings, Sal reaches the sergeant's house and, posing as a friend of his son returning a borrowed book, coaxes out the address: Mike Bickle, a college freshman in Chanting Falls. On the bus there they run into Ben, bound for the hospital to visit someone he will not name. Outside Mike's dormitory Phoebe loses her nerve — and from a bench they see Mrs. Winterbottom on the lawn, kissing Mike's cheek.
A First KissShaken, Sal walks to the hospital instead and finds Ben on the lawn of the psychiatric ward with his mother, Mrs. Finney, whose detached, faraway manner recalls Sal's own mother after the baby died. Watching together, Sal and Ben share a first kiss that tastes faintly of blackberries. Phoebe, furious at being left behind and sick at what she has seen, tells no one.
The Truth ReturnsThen Mrs. Winterbottom telephones: she returns tomorrow, bringing a guest no one is to prejudge. She arrives by taxi a new woman, hair cut short and stylish, and tells the truth — Mike is her son, born before her marriage and placed for adoption, hidden for respectability's sake. Mr. Winterbottom, confused but gracious, shakes Mike's hand and asks to talk calmly; Prudence flirts; Phoebe storms out with Sal — and they catch Mrs. Partridge laying a sixth envelope on the porch.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Geysers, cover stories, and homecomings: geyser, treacherous, scheme, detached, respectable…
Literary Elements
Parallel plots that set three absent mothers side by side, dramatic irony as a secret outruns Mr. Winterbottom, and a blackberry motif that returns at a first kiss
Cross-Curricular
Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills — how the carving was made from 1927 to 1941, and why the Lakota, promised these hills by treaty, see the mountain differently
Chapter Summary
Ch.
What happens
Chapter 34
Old Faithful — The travelers join the crowd at the great geyser in Wyoming. It starts with a thin spit of water, then erupts in a towering column, and Gram beams with the purest joy of the whole trip. Back on the road, Gramps sets his sights on reaching the Idaho border before dark.
Chapter 35
The Plan — While the car winds through steep mountain roads that make Sal nervous, her story goes on: Mr. Birkway apologizes for reading the journals aloud, Ben keeps missing his chance at a kiss, and Sal, posing on the phone as a friend of Sergeant Bickle’s son, tricks the sergeant into giving up Mike’s college address.
Chapter 36
The Visit — Sal and Phoebe ride the bus to Chanting Falls — with Ben aboard, bound for the hospital and refusing to say who he is visiting. At Mike’s dormitory Phoebe’s courage fails, and from a bench the girls watch Mrs. Winterbottom cross the lawn with Mike and kiss his cheek.
Chapter 37
A Kiss — Reeling, Sal walks to the hospital and finds Ben with his mother, Mrs. Finney, in the psychiatric ward. Her detached, wandering manner reminds Sal of her own mother after the baby died. On the hospital lawn, Sal and Ben finally share a kiss — one that tastes, he asks her to confirm, of blackberries.
Chapter 38
Spit — Phoebe, left at the bus stop, is furious and swears she no longer cares where her mother stays — and keeps the campus kiss a secret. News comes through Prudence: Mrs. Winterbottom returns tomorrow with a guest, and no one is to prejudge. Sal tells her father, who is glad for Phoebe and quietly sad for himself.
Chapter 39
Homecoming — A taxi delivers Mrs. Winterbottom, stylishly changed, and Mike Bickle. She tells everything: Mike is her son, born before her marriage and given up for adoption, hidden for years so she could seem respectable. Mr. Winterbottom responds with a gracious handshake; Phoebe storms out — just as Mrs. Partridge leaves a sixth white envelope on the porch.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Chapters 34–39, then answer each question.
⛰Knowledge Bank · Why the Hills Look Black
Geology · The Black HillsDrive west across South Dakota and the flat grassland suddenly grows a dark wall on the horizon. The Lakota name for this country, Paha Sapa, means hills that are black, and the color is real: the slopes wear dense stands of ponderosa pine, and from miles out that deep green reads as black. Under the trees the hills are a dome of very old rock. About sixty million years ago the land here was pushed upward, and erosion then stripped the soft outer layers away, exposing a core of hard, fine-grained granite more than a billion years old. That rock is why sculptors came: Rushmore granite wears away at roughly one inch every ten thousand years, so a face cut into it will hold its features practically forever. Ecologists prize the hills for a different reason. Cool, moist, and forested, they stand alone in a dry ocean of prairie — a green, crowded, living island.
geysern.Ch.34
An underground hot spring that shoots water and steam into the air
“The travelers joined the crowd waiting for the geyser to go off.”
eruptv.Ch.34
To burst out suddenly and powerfully
“At last the water erupted in a column higher than the trees.”
treacherousadj.Ch.35
Full of hidden danger
“The treacherous mountain road wound along the edge of a long drop.”
schemen.Ch.35
A clever plan, often a sneaky one
“The phone call was part of a scheme to find Mike’s address.”
dormitoryn.Ch.36
A building where students live at a school or college
“Mike lived in a freshman dormitory at the college in Chanting Falls.”
wardn.Ch.37
A separate section of a hospital for one kind of patient
“Ben’s mother was staying in the psychiatric ward.”
detachedadj.Ch.37
Distant and uninvolved, as if far away
“Mrs. Finney wandered the lawn with a detached, faraway look.”
prejudgev.Ch.38
To form an opinion about someone before knowing the facts
“Mrs. Winterbottom asked the family not to prejudge her guest.”
respectableadj.Ch.39
Seen by others as proper and worthy of approval
“She had spent years trying to look respectable to the neighbors.”
graciousadj.Ch.39
Kind and courteous, even under strain
“Mr. Winterbottom was gracious enough to shake the young man’s hand.”
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, the Black Hills' granite core did not erupt into view; it was exposed when ___.Ch.34
2‘To erupt’ means to burst out suddenly and powerfully.Ch.34
3The mountain roads felt ‘treacherous’, meaning ___.Ch.35
4A ‘scheme’ is ___.Ch.35
5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.36
Word choices:dormitorywardgeyserscheme- some words will not be used
Mike lived in a freshman at the college.
Ben’s mother stayed in the psychiatric of the hospital.
6Someone who seems ‘detached’ is ___.Ch.37
7A ‘respectable’ person is one the neighbors consider shameful.Ch.39
8A ‘gracious’ host is ___.Ch.39
9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.38
Word choices:prejudgerespectabledetachedgracious- some words will not be used
She asked the family not to the guest she was bringing.
She had kept the secret because she wanted to seem .
10A ‘ward’ is a separate section of a hospital.Ch.37
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Chapters 34–39.
🔨Knowledge Bank · Four Faces, Fourteen Years
History · Carving RushmoreMount Rushmore began as a tourism idea. In 1924 a state historian named Doane Robinson wanted a carving huge enough to pull travelers off the main roads of South Dakota, and the sculptor Gutzon Borglum gave the plan its final shape: four presidents — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt — on a granite peak. From 1927 to 1941, nearly four hundred workers, many of them local miners, hung from steel cables and removed about ninety percent of the stone with carefully placed dynamite. For the last few feet they switched to drills, boring tight clusters of shallow holes called honeycombing so the weakened rock could be chipped away to a smooth surface. Each head stands about sixty feet tall; Jefferson had to be blasted off and restarted on the other side of Washington when the first site cracked. In fourteen years of blasting on a cliff, not one worker was killed. Borglum died in March 1941, and that October his son ended the project — the faces complete, the figures below them permanently unfinished.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, the workers' finishing technique called honeycombing involved ___.Ch.34
2At first Old Faithful sends up only a thin spit of water.Ch.34
3How do the girls learn where Mike Bickle lives?Ch.35
4Who turns up on the bus to Chanting Falls?Ch.36
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 34–39
Mrs. Winterbottom comes home by taxi and tells the whole truth.
Old Faithful erupts while Gram beams at the edge of the crowd.
On the hospital lawn, Sal and Ben share a first kiss.
From a campus bench, the girls watch Mrs. Winterbottom kiss Mike’s cheek.
Posing as a friend, Sal coaxes an address out of Sergeant Bickle.
6Phoebe marches straight into the dormitory and confronts Mike Bickle.Ch.36
7Whom does Ben visit in the psychiatric ward?Ch.37
8What does Mrs. Winterbottom reveal about Mike Bickle?Ch.39
9It is Sergeant Bickle whom the girls spot leaving a white envelope on Phoebe’s porch.Ch.39
10How does Mr. Winterbottom finally respond to Mike?Ch.39
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Sharon Creech tells the story across Chapters 34–39.
👁Knowledge Bank · What the Reader Knows First
Literary Craft · Dramatic IronyDramatic irony is the charged gap between what the reader knows and what a character knows, and Part 7 runs almost entirely on it. On the campus lawn, Phoebe and Sal see something they cannot unsee: Mrs. Winterbottom, alive and well, kissing the cheek of the young man Phoebe calls the lunatic. From that moment the girls carry a secret the rest of the cast lacks. Prudence chatters, Mr. Winterbottom hopes, and every innocent line they speak lands differently on a reader who knows the truth. Sharon Creech (author) tightens the gap instead of closing it: the phone call home announces a guest but no name, the warning against prejudging promises a shock without delivering one, and the taxi’s slow arrival stretches the wait a page longer. So when the truth finally lands, it feels less like news than like release — the earned payoff of chapters built on irony.
Parallel Plots
Three storylines about three mothers — Sal’s, Phoebe’s, and Ben’s — run beside one another until Part 7 lets each one light up the others.
Dramatic Irony
After the campus bench, the girls and the reader know what Mr. Winterbottom does not, and every calm scene in the Winterbottom house crackles because of it.
Motif
Blackberries have trailed Sal’s memories of her mother since the earliest chapters; when a first kiss tastes faintly of them, the motif ties her past to her present.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1The Knowledge Bank explains that from the campus-lawn scene onward, dramatic irony powers Part 7 because ___.Ch.37
2Phoebe and Sal knowing about the campus kiss while Mr. Winterbottom knows nothing is ___.Ch.36
3A motif is an image or idea that appears only once in a novel.Ch.37
4Ben asking whether the kiss tasted of blackberries returns to the book’s blackberry ___.Ch.37
5Creech (author) signals Mrs. Winterbottom’s change through her appearance before the character explains anything.Ch.39
6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.39
Word choices:foreshadowingmotifsimileglossary- some words will not be used
The sixth white envelope, unopened as the part ends, works as .
Blackberries returning at the kiss extend a .
7Phoebe’s whole story reaching us through Sal’s telling in the car makes the novel ___.Ch.35
8In dramatic irony, the audience holds knowledge that at least one character lacks.Ch.38
9Mrs. Winterbottom’s new haircut and clothes, shown before she explains anything, are ___.Ch.39
10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.36
Word choices:ironyframesymbolrhyme- some words will not be used
The girls knowing what Mr. Winterbottom does not creates dramatic .
A story told inside another story makes a narrative.
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
⚖Knowledge Bank · The Money Nobody Will Take
Law · The Black Hills ClaimIn 1868, at Fort Laramie, the United States signed a treaty setting the Black Hills aside for the Lakota people. Six years later an army expedition reported gold in the streams; prospectors swarmed in by the thousand, and in 1877 Congress passed an act that simply took the hills. The Lakota never accepted the loss. Their lawyers pressed the claim for most of a century, and in 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation, the Supreme Court ruled the seizure unlawful — a taking of property that required just compensation — and awarded more than one hundred million dollars. Then came the part that surprises people: the Lakota refused the money. Accepting payment, they argued, would turn a theft into a sale. The award still sits in a government trust, where it has grown past a billion dollars, untouched, while the Lakota continue to ask for the return of the land.
Picture a ring of strangers standing around a bare patch of ground in Wyoming, all of them waiting for the earth to perform. At first it offers only a thin, pitiful spit of water — and then the ground clears its throat and a white column climbs into the sky, and a whole crowd of grown adults cheers like children. At the edge of it stands Gram, smiling so hard she cannot stop. Then the car again, and mountain roads that twist along the edges of long drops, and Gramps promising himself the Idaho border before dark. To keep everyone steady, Sal keeps telling her story — and the story has stopped being safe. A telephone call made in a borrowed voice. A bus to a college town. A bench with a view Phoebe never wanted. A first kiss that tastes faintly of blackberries. And at last a taxi at the curb, carrying a mother with a stylish new haircut and a passenger whose name will change everything.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “Part 7 argues that a secret kept for the sake of appearances does more damage than the truth it hides.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2Happens on the road trip, or Happens in Phoebe’s story? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ Happens on the road tripHappens in Phoebe’s story ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
Sal phones, posing as a friend of the sergeant’s son→
Phoebe’s courage fails at the dormitory door→
Mrs. Finney’s faraway manner stirs Sal’s memory→
Mrs. Winterbottom phones ahead about a guest→
🧠Knowledge Bank question
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
According to the Knowledge Bank, the Lakota refused the 1980 award because accepting payment would , and today the award .
Part 5
Standardized Test
Six Grandfathers, Four Faces · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice
Read the passage — the highlighted words are tested — then answer. Tap an answer, then tap it again to confirm.
SATCentral Ideas — the passage's main point
SATInference — a conclusion the passage implies
SATAuthor’s Purpose — what the author wants to achieve
SATWords in Context — a word's meaning in this passage
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated in the passage
TOEFLVocabulary — a tested word's meaning here
Six Grandfathers, Four Faces
Long before it was a monument, the mountain had a name. The Lakota call this country Paha Sapa, the hills that are black, because dense ponderosa pine — a tall western pine — darkens the slopes when seen from the prairie. In a treaty signed at Fort Laramie in 1868, the United States promised these hills to the Lakota for as long as they wished to keep them. Six years later an army expedition reported gold in the streams, miners rushed in, and in 1877 Congress took the hills back. To the Lakota the granite peak later carved with presidents was already sacred ground: the Six Grandfathers.
The carving began as a scheme to draw travelers to South Dakota. In 1924 a state historian proposed a giant sculpture, and the sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose the mountain and four presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. From 1927 to 1941, nearly four hundred workers hung from cables and removed about ninety percent of the stone with dynamite, shaping each colossal face, roughly sixty feet tall, before smoothing the surface with drills. In fourteen years of treacherous blasting on the edge of a cliff, not a single worker died.
Today the mountain carries two meanings at once. For millions of visitors each year it is a shrine to four presidencies; for many Lakota it is a broken promise cut into sacred rock. In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled that the hills had been taken unlawfully and awarded more than one hundred million dollars in compensation. The Lakota declined the money — accepting it, they argued, would turn a theft into a sale — and the award sits untouched in a trust, grown past a billion dollars. They still ask for the land itself.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas
2According to the passage, what did the 1868 treaty do?TOEFL · Factual Information
3Why did Congress take the hills back in 1877?TOEFL · Factual Information
4What can be inferred about the dynamite work at Mount Rushmore?SAT · Inference
5According to the passage, how was most of the stone removed?TOEFL · Factual Information
6Why does the author include the 1980 Supreme Court ruling?SAT · Author’s Purpose
7Based on the passage, why did the Lakota refuse the money?SAT · Inference
8In the passage, scheme most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
9In the passage, treacherous most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
10In the passage, declined most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
Part 6 · Optional
Creative Writing
A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.
About This Section
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 7 “The Secret That Grew”
Mrs. Winterbottom hid the truth for years because she wanted to seem respectable — and the hiding hurt her family more than the truth ever could. Write about a time you, someone you know, or a character you invent kept a secret to protect an image, and what happened when the truth came out. 6–10 sentences. End with what the secret cost, and whether telling it sooner would have changed things.
You can start with: “At first, keeping it quiet seemed like the kindest thing to do...”
0 / 40 words minimum
🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)
No right or wrong — tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sharon Creech. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Sharon Creech’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.
