Chapter 37: A Dive with Intent — Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
All references are to the chapter itself, not to the novel as a whole, unless otherwise noted.
The chapter is told from the first-person perspective of the narrator, an actress who is preparing to film a crash scene for a movie about the pilot Marian Graves.
The chapter alternates between two moments: a reflective interlude in Hawaii and a later flying lesson in Los Angeles.
The narrative is not strictly chronological, but the summary below presents the events in the order they are experienced by the narrator, which is the most useful way to follow her emotional arc.
The chapter opens with the narrator returning to her hotel in Hawaii after visiting a friend, Joey Kamaka.
She is overwhelmed by emotion and cries on her bed, releasing a flood of feelings.
She cries because she has learned that Marian Graves did not drown, and that at least one person never considered her lost.
She cries because of Joey's kindness, because she is jealous of a child named Kalani who had a childhood while the narrator did not, and because she feels like an asshole for being jealous of a kid whose parents couldn't take care of her.
She also cries for Mitch and for her parents, and simply because she has gotten going and sometimes tears must be ridden out.
After crying, she decides to go to the beach.
She puts on a bathing suit, rides the elevator down, jogs through the sand, drops her robe, and walks into the ocean.
She dives under the water.
With her eyes closed, she imagines the ocean floor sloping away into darkness, into submerged deserts, canyons, and mountain ranges, rising again into the edges of continents.
She thinks of ships, airplanes, and bones being eaten away by rust and tiny nibbling things, grown over by coral and sponges, scuttled across by crabs.
She thinks of the Peregrine, Marian's plane, and how no one would ever find it, because no one would ever know where to look.
When she surfaces, a wave lifts her and pushes her back toward shore.
She swims out again, and watches the sun set, remembering that the sun is fire, molten, as it slides behind the sea.
The water dims and the clouds flush.
She considers what she will do after the movie is finished.
She thinks she could go to New Zealand or Antarctica and keep playing detective, but she decides she doesn't need to know the whole story.
No story is ever whole.
She recalls reading about Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly, a figure who died after someone reached inside him and cut off a piece of his heart, but whose body did not decay, as though without his whole heart he couldn't transform anymore, not even into dust.
She hopes Marian kept her whole heart.
The chapter then shifts to Los Angeles, where the narrator takes another flying lesson before filming the crash.
This time the instructor is a woman, a no-nonsense sort in Wrangler jeans with a strict bob of orange hair and aviator shades.
The narrator tells her that she took a lesson once before but freaked out when it was her turn to fly, and that she let go of the controls.
The instructor asks if she wants to fly it now, and the narrator says she might not, but she wants to try.
The instructor says cool.
It is afternoon, with no marine layer, just open sky dingy with smog.
Catalina wallows offshore, and the ocean horizon is soft and hazy.
The city sprawls in every other direction.
The narrator and the instructor fly a Cessna toward Malibu.
The instructor tells her to take the yoke and fly steady and level.
The narrator puts her hands on the yoke, feeling the warm plastic and the vibration of the engine.
The instructor shows her which instruments to watch, what is supposed to be the horizon and what is supposed to be the wings, and how to line them up.
The instructor asks if she is doing okay, and the narrator says she thinks so.
The instructor tells her that if she pulls back a little bit, the nose will go up.
The narrator pulls back, and the windshield fills slowly with sky.
This is the final action of the chapter, a moment of taking control and overcoming her earlier fear.
The chapter ends on this image of ascent and possibility.
The chapter is a turning point for the narrator, as she moves from emotional release to a deliberate act of agency.
The dive into the ocean serves as a symbolic cleansing and a confrontation with the vast unknown, while the flying lesson represents a concrete step toward reclaiming control.
The narrator's decision not to pursue the full story of Marian Graves is a mature acceptance of the incompleteness of all narratives, and her hope that Marian kept her whole heart echoes her own desire for wholeness.
The chapter is rich with imagery of transformation and decay, and it sets up the narrator's readiness to film the crash scene, which will require her to embody Marian's final moments.
The chapter also deepens the novel's exploration of the relationship between the actress and the historical figure she portrays, as the narrator's emotional journey mirrors Marian's own themes of flight, loss, and the search for meaning.
The chapter is a quiet but powerful interlude that prepares the narrator for the climactic scenes to come.
It shows her learning to let go of certainty and to take control when it matters, both in the air and in her own life.
The chapter's title,