All chapter summaries
All these summaries will give you a brief summarization of every chapter in the book. There are 26 chapters.
CHAPTER 1-
The 16 year old protagonist sees a small column of smoke in the distance, and she is sure this is a sign that there is someone slowly approaching her small valley. She has been alone in the valley since the devastating nuclear war ended, without radio stations or electricity. Her family went on a trip with the owners of the nearby corner store to see if they could find anyone still alive in the surrounding areas outside of their valley, an area untouched by the war. The girl’s family never returns leaving her to think she was the last person in the world.
CHAPTER 2-
The girl worries about the approaching person, which she now knows is a man covered entirely by a helmet and suit. She tries her best to make the valley look uninhabited for the arrival of the mystery person. She plans to hide from the man in a cave on a hillside. She releases all her farm animals, covers up her vegetable patch, and makes sure the house is as dusty as it would be if left unattended for a whole year.
CHAPTER 3-
In chapter three of Z for Zachariah, the man in the green plastic suit stumbles upon the girl’s valley. He explores her house, and is puzzled when no-one responds to his calls of “Anyone here?!” The girl doesn’t respond, knowing that she has to be sure she can trust the man before revealing herself. The following day the man tests one of the creeks in the valley for any radiation, and finds that it is completely free from radioactivity. He continues exploring further downstream to the poisonous Burden Creek, and jumps in without testing it, under the impression that it is the same creek he tested earlier. Again, the girl doesn’t warn the man of the creek’s danger, because she doesn’t want to reveal herself to him yet.
CHAPTER 4-
Faro, David’s (the girl’s brother) dog, returns to the valley, after disappearing when David went away. The man befriends Faro, and the girl worries that Faro will unintentionally lead the man to her cave hideout. The man also discovers his mistake of swimming in the creek, and he quickly falls ill, which causes him to retreat to his small tent that he has set up right outside of Ann’s old house.
CHAPTER 5-
The man remains inside his little tent, and Faro visits the girl in hope of food, because his new friend (the man) can’t feed him anymore. She starts to feel bad about leaving the man to die, so she cautiously starts caring for him, knowing that even if he did want to hurt her, he wouldn’t be able to, in his weak state. When the girl returns to the man the next day, he deliriously addresses her as “Edward”, in a weak and coherent state, revealing a former conflict. On the man’s request, the girls checks Burden Creek for its radio-activity level. When she returns with an extremely high reading, the man announces gravely that he will soon fall very ill, maybe even fatally ill.
CHAPTER 6-
In this chapter we discover the girl’s name is Ann Burden, and that the man’s name is Mr. John Loomis.
Ann persuades the man to move into her abandoned house. He reveals that his name is John Loomis, and that he is a chemist at Cornwell University. While he was working he assisted in the development of the radiation proof-suit that he was wearing when he arrived in the valley. However, when the bombing started, only one piece of the suit had been created, and he was forced to remain in his underground lab for several months, until he finished the suit. Finally he was able to venture outside only to discover everyone was dead. When Ann asks who Edward is (the name that he called out in a delirious state) Mr. Loomis looks shocked and scared, and then mumbles that Edward was a colleague of his at Cornwell.
CHAPTER 7-
Mr. Loomis and Ann work in the garden and discuss using her father’s tractor. Ann misses her old life, and wishes to return to the cave for a bit of privacy, but then Loomis starts having dreadful nightmares, reliving his moments with Edward, who apparently attempted to leave the lab with the safe-suit (the radiation-proof suit) to find his wife and children. Ann decides to stay by Loomis through his troublesome times, rather than returning to her cave.
CHAPTER 8-
The following morning Ann goes out to collect some greens for a fresh salad, something she has been deprived of for more than a year. She daydreams about marrying Mr. Loomis, and then worries when she finds him testing the creek himself, and worries even more when he confirms the bad news about a high level of radiation in the creek he bathed in. They also talk about making an electric generator, but their conversation is interrupted as Mr. Loomis grows very weak from his exposure to the radioactive poisoning.
CHAPTER 9-
With Mr. Loomis’ help, Ann figures out how to make the gasoline pump at the corner store work without the use of electricity. This allows her to get the tractor running. Ann is very happy now that she doesn’t solely have to rely on the food from the store, as she can now harvest her own with the use of the tractor. Ann happily prepares the fields for planting as much corn as she can. Although, that night, Mr. Loomis’ condition worsens, as his fever rises rapidly.
CHAPTER 10-
As Mr. Loomis’ struggle with his severe case of radiation poisoning worsens, he starts sleeping nearly all day and every day in the house. At one point though, he wakes up from a terrible nightmare, and sprints outside firing three shots at the house from a large gun he grabbed from his wagon. He told Ann that he saw someone in the house, and that it was Edward again. Ann wonders why Mr. Loomis is so afraid of this Edward person he keeps mentioning.
CHAPTER 11-
Mr. Loomis is constantly delirious, and during one of his terrible dreams she hears Mr. Loomis threaten Edward in his sleep. Ann holds the radiation-proof suit to the light and it reveals three bullet holes in the middle of it. Although she now knows that Loomis is a killer, she goes to pray for him in the church as his condition again worsens. Ann is torn by an internal conflict, but decides that even if Loomis is a killer himself, she doesn’t want him to die.
CHAPTER 12-
Loomis is still gravely ill, and Ann returns to the church to pray for him again. She finds a fallen baby crow at the altar, and she thinks it is a good sign that there is still new life in the valley. Ann tries to find out why Loomis shot Edward, but decides she cannot judge him by what he has done, until she actually knows him. The next day Loomis’ breathing sounds deeper, a sign of improvement.
CHAPTER 13-
Ann thinks about her old life, before the war, and remembers her dreams to become an English teacher. She ponders taking the safe suit and travelling to Ogdentown, the nearest town, and taking some books from the library there. On June 8 Mr. Loomis wakes up briefly, his fever has dropped, but he is thin and very weak.
CHAPTER 14-
Ann celebrates her 16th birthday on June 15, by baking a cake. Mr. Loomis continues improving, but still cannot walk. Ann returns to her chores that she hasn’t had to do for a whole year, and Loomis takes a possessive interest in Ann’s farm. Ann realizes that Loomis has started considering the farm as much his as Ann’s.
CHAPTER 15-
Loomis starts walking, and becomes obsessed with his new gained independence. Ann discusses her idea about travelling to Ogdetown to take some books back for reading. As Loomis is only interested in technical books he rejects Ann’s desire for entertaining novels. When Ann offers to wear the radiation suit and drive to Ogdentown, Mr. Loomis threateningly tells Ann never to touch the suit. He starts bossing Ann around, and tells her to “plan as if this valley is the whole world, and we are starting a colony”. His change in character makes Ann feel uneasy.
CHAPTER 16-
Ann feels that she needs to get to know Mr. Loomis better. She asks him several questions about his background, and when she asks if he has ever been married, he reacts oddly, telling her sharply, “No, I was not married”. Loomis quickly grabs Ann’s hand as he responds, and the sudden movement makes Ann’s reflexes strike his face by accident. This makes Loomis angry, which makes Ann wary about Loomis’ growing physical strength.
CHAPTER 17-
In a flashback, on June 30, Ann reveals that she has moved back into her cave, and explains why: The morning after the confrontation, she tries her best to act like nothing happened, but she becomes very nervous when Mr. Loomis watches her every move while she works in the cornfield from the balcony. Loomis asked Ann to read aloud to him, but Ann thinks that he is trying to fool her, because he doesn’t seem to be legitimately listening to what she said.
CHAPTER 18-
That evening, Loomis asks Ann to play the piano, like she did when she thought Loomis was perishing. Loomis acts suspiciously while “listening” again. The next night, Ann wakes to find Loomis in her room running his hands over her “not roughly, but in a dreadful, possessive way”. Ann “knew what he was planning to do”, and she luckily hit him in the neck with her elbow, narrowly escaping the assault and running from the house
CHAPTER 19-
Ann stocks her cave with various supplies from the store. She worries that Loomis will use Faro to track her down. Loomis harshly tethers the dog to a post on the porch so he has absolute control over him. Despite Ann’s hate for Loomis, she decides she must still leave supplies on the porch for him, as she feels she can’t let him starve. Ann makes a deal with him that she will gladly let him have the house, if he will let her live separately in peace.
CHAPTER 20-
The night after Ann has made her deal with Loomis, he unsuccessfully tries to chase Ann down by using the tractor. While Ann watches him with her binoculars she wishes that Loomis had never come to the valley in the first place. She loathes her old life by herself. She allows her mind drift and wanders whether there are any other untouched areas like her own in the world, inhabited with survivors.
CHAPTER 21-
Several weeks have passed, and Ann explains that she hasn’t written in her diary because she was wounded by Loomis, who shot her. In a flashback she tells us that the deal she made with Loomis for a peaceful life seemed to be working well for a while. Until, after about two weeks, Loomis kept the tractor key with preventing Ann from doing any more field work. Loomis tells her that as long as she continues “this stupidity, this staying away, there are things you are going to have to do without”. Ann later believes that he is not luring her in towards him, but he is in fear that she will steal the tractor.
CHAPTER 22-
Ann continues her flashback. Soon after the last event, Ann sees Loomis speeding towards the corner store with his rifle in hand. He spends a long time searching through the old owner’s upstairs living quarters and, once he’s convinced Ann is not there, he padlocks the doors to the store, locking Ann out of the store completely.
CHAPTER 23-
Ann now realizes that Loomis is in fact luring her in towards him, by trying to starve her out. Ann wonders whether the radiation poisoning has affected Loomis’ mind, and pities him. She approaches the house to talk to him, but he shoots her ankle from the safety of the house. Ann realizes that he tried to injure her so he would be able to capture her alive.
CHAPTER 24-
It is on August 6 that Ann decides she will steal the radiation-proof suit and escape the valley, to chase her dreams of finding another place with war survivors, with children to teach. Ann knows that she must act very soon, for the cold months are approaching. One day, Loomis lures Ann into the store when he leaves the doors open, after he locked them shut for a month. His gun shot misses her, and he follows Ann with Faro. Ann retrieves her gun, and she deliberately leads the duo towards the contaminated Burden Creek. Faro, drawn by Ann’s scent, tries to jump into the creek to follow her, and the dog passes away the next morning. Ann decides it is time for her to put her big plan into action.
CHAPTER 25-
Ann recounts that she has the safe suit, and that she tricked Loomis by leaving a note on the porch asking to meet her unarmed. He reads the note and heads on out with his gun in arm. After he walks away, Ann steals the safe suit and all its pieces, from the wagon (he takes the wagon too). She knows that Loomis will attempt to kill her when he sees her with the radiation suit, but she knows she can’t leave the valley without talking to him. She puts on the suit, and waits for him on the road to Ogdentown, prepared to die.
CHAPTER 26-
Loomis discovers Ann wearing the safe suit, shoots at her and demands she take it off. When Ann brings up his murder of Edward, Loomis falters, and Ann continues, with new found courage. Ann explains to him that she wishes to live with other survivors of the war, and she argues that if he kills her, he will be alone, but if he leaves her, she could send other survivors to rescue him. Ann turns away, takes her first step of a long journey ahead, and expects Loomis to shoot her, but instead he yells out to her, and points west, saying that he saw birds circling high that way. Ann walks away, in hope of “a trace of green” on the horizon.
The 16 year old protagonist sees a small column of smoke in the distance, and she is sure this is a sign that there is someone slowly approaching her small valley. She has been alone in the valley since the devastating nuclear war ended, without radio stations or electricity. Her family went on a trip with the owners of the nearby corner store to see if they could find anyone still alive in the surrounding areas outside of their valley, an area untouched by the war. The girl’s family never returns leaving her to think she was the last person in the world.
CHAPTER 2-
The girl worries about the approaching person, which she now knows is a man covered entirely by a helmet and suit. She tries her best to make the valley look uninhabited for the arrival of the mystery person. She plans to hide from the man in a cave on a hillside. She releases all her farm animals, covers up her vegetable patch, and makes sure the house is as dusty as it would be if left unattended for a whole year.
CHAPTER 3-
In chapter three of Z for Zachariah, the man in the green plastic suit stumbles upon the girl’s valley. He explores her house, and is puzzled when no-one responds to his calls of “Anyone here?!” The girl doesn’t respond, knowing that she has to be sure she can trust the man before revealing herself. The following day the man tests one of the creeks in the valley for any radiation, and finds that it is completely free from radioactivity. He continues exploring further downstream to the poisonous Burden Creek, and jumps in without testing it, under the impression that it is the same creek he tested earlier. Again, the girl doesn’t warn the man of the creek’s danger, because she doesn’t want to reveal herself to him yet.
CHAPTER 4-
Faro, David’s (the girl’s brother) dog, returns to the valley, after disappearing when David went away. The man befriends Faro, and the girl worries that Faro will unintentionally lead the man to her cave hideout. The man also discovers his mistake of swimming in the creek, and he quickly falls ill, which causes him to retreat to his small tent that he has set up right outside of Ann’s old house.
CHAPTER 5-
The man remains inside his little tent, and Faro visits the girl in hope of food, because his new friend (the man) can’t feed him anymore. She starts to feel bad about leaving the man to die, so she cautiously starts caring for him, knowing that even if he did want to hurt her, he wouldn’t be able to, in his weak state. When the girl returns to the man the next day, he deliriously addresses her as “Edward”, in a weak and coherent state, revealing a former conflict. On the man’s request, the girls checks Burden Creek for its radio-activity level. When she returns with an extremely high reading, the man announces gravely that he will soon fall very ill, maybe even fatally ill.
CHAPTER 6-
In this chapter we discover the girl’s name is Ann Burden, and that the man’s name is Mr. John Loomis.
Ann persuades the man to move into her abandoned house. He reveals that his name is John Loomis, and that he is a chemist at Cornwell University. While he was working he assisted in the development of the radiation proof-suit that he was wearing when he arrived in the valley. However, when the bombing started, only one piece of the suit had been created, and he was forced to remain in his underground lab for several months, until he finished the suit. Finally he was able to venture outside only to discover everyone was dead. When Ann asks who Edward is (the name that he called out in a delirious state) Mr. Loomis looks shocked and scared, and then mumbles that Edward was a colleague of his at Cornwell.
CHAPTER 7-
Mr. Loomis and Ann work in the garden and discuss using her father’s tractor. Ann misses her old life, and wishes to return to the cave for a bit of privacy, but then Loomis starts having dreadful nightmares, reliving his moments with Edward, who apparently attempted to leave the lab with the safe-suit (the radiation-proof suit) to find his wife and children. Ann decides to stay by Loomis through his troublesome times, rather than returning to her cave.
CHAPTER 8-
The following morning Ann goes out to collect some greens for a fresh salad, something she has been deprived of for more than a year. She daydreams about marrying Mr. Loomis, and then worries when she finds him testing the creek himself, and worries even more when he confirms the bad news about a high level of radiation in the creek he bathed in. They also talk about making an electric generator, but their conversation is interrupted as Mr. Loomis grows very weak from his exposure to the radioactive poisoning.
CHAPTER 9-
With Mr. Loomis’ help, Ann figures out how to make the gasoline pump at the corner store work without the use of electricity. This allows her to get the tractor running. Ann is very happy now that she doesn’t solely have to rely on the food from the store, as she can now harvest her own with the use of the tractor. Ann happily prepares the fields for planting as much corn as she can. Although, that night, Mr. Loomis’ condition worsens, as his fever rises rapidly.
CHAPTER 10-
As Mr. Loomis’ struggle with his severe case of radiation poisoning worsens, he starts sleeping nearly all day and every day in the house. At one point though, he wakes up from a terrible nightmare, and sprints outside firing three shots at the house from a large gun he grabbed from his wagon. He told Ann that he saw someone in the house, and that it was Edward again. Ann wonders why Mr. Loomis is so afraid of this Edward person he keeps mentioning.
CHAPTER 11-
Mr. Loomis is constantly delirious, and during one of his terrible dreams she hears Mr. Loomis threaten Edward in his sleep. Ann holds the radiation-proof suit to the light and it reveals three bullet holes in the middle of it. Although she now knows that Loomis is a killer, she goes to pray for him in the church as his condition again worsens. Ann is torn by an internal conflict, but decides that even if Loomis is a killer himself, she doesn’t want him to die.
CHAPTER 12-
Loomis is still gravely ill, and Ann returns to the church to pray for him again. She finds a fallen baby crow at the altar, and she thinks it is a good sign that there is still new life in the valley. Ann tries to find out why Loomis shot Edward, but decides she cannot judge him by what he has done, until she actually knows him. The next day Loomis’ breathing sounds deeper, a sign of improvement.
CHAPTER 13-
Ann thinks about her old life, before the war, and remembers her dreams to become an English teacher. She ponders taking the safe suit and travelling to Ogdentown, the nearest town, and taking some books from the library there. On June 8 Mr. Loomis wakes up briefly, his fever has dropped, but he is thin and very weak.
CHAPTER 14-
Ann celebrates her 16th birthday on June 15, by baking a cake. Mr. Loomis continues improving, but still cannot walk. Ann returns to her chores that she hasn’t had to do for a whole year, and Loomis takes a possessive interest in Ann’s farm. Ann realizes that Loomis has started considering the farm as much his as Ann’s.
CHAPTER 15-
Loomis starts walking, and becomes obsessed with his new gained independence. Ann discusses her idea about travelling to Ogdetown to take some books back for reading. As Loomis is only interested in technical books he rejects Ann’s desire for entertaining novels. When Ann offers to wear the radiation suit and drive to Ogdentown, Mr. Loomis threateningly tells Ann never to touch the suit. He starts bossing Ann around, and tells her to “plan as if this valley is the whole world, and we are starting a colony”. His change in character makes Ann feel uneasy.
CHAPTER 16-
Ann feels that she needs to get to know Mr. Loomis better. She asks him several questions about his background, and when she asks if he has ever been married, he reacts oddly, telling her sharply, “No, I was not married”. Loomis quickly grabs Ann’s hand as he responds, and the sudden movement makes Ann’s reflexes strike his face by accident. This makes Loomis angry, which makes Ann wary about Loomis’ growing physical strength.
CHAPTER 17-
In a flashback, on June 30, Ann reveals that she has moved back into her cave, and explains why: The morning after the confrontation, she tries her best to act like nothing happened, but she becomes very nervous when Mr. Loomis watches her every move while she works in the cornfield from the balcony. Loomis asked Ann to read aloud to him, but Ann thinks that he is trying to fool her, because he doesn’t seem to be legitimately listening to what she said.
CHAPTER 18-
That evening, Loomis asks Ann to play the piano, like she did when she thought Loomis was perishing. Loomis acts suspiciously while “listening” again. The next night, Ann wakes to find Loomis in her room running his hands over her “not roughly, but in a dreadful, possessive way”. Ann “knew what he was planning to do”, and she luckily hit him in the neck with her elbow, narrowly escaping the assault and running from the house
CHAPTER 19-
Ann stocks her cave with various supplies from the store. She worries that Loomis will use Faro to track her down. Loomis harshly tethers the dog to a post on the porch so he has absolute control over him. Despite Ann’s hate for Loomis, she decides she must still leave supplies on the porch for him, as she feels she can’t let him starve. Ann makes a deal with him that she will gladly let him have the house, if he will let her live separately in peace.
CHAPTER 20-
The night after Ann has made her deal with Loomis, he unsuccessfully tries to chase Ann down by using the tractor. While Ann watches him with her binoculars she wishes that Loomis had never come to the valley in the first place. She loathes her old life by herself. She allows her mind drift and wanders whether there are any other untouched areas like her own in the world, inhabited with survivors.
CHAPTER 21-
Several weeks have passed, and Ann explains that she hasn’t written in her diary because she was wounded by Loomis, who shot her. In a flashback she tells us that the deal she made with Loomis for a peaceful life seemed to be working well for a while. Until, after about two weeks, Loomis kept the tractor key with preventing Ann from doing any more field work. Loomis tells her that as long as she continues “this stupidity, this staying away, there are things you are going to have to do without”. Ann later believes that he is not luring her in towards him, but he is in fear that she will steal the tractor.
CHAPTER 22-
Ann continues her flashback. Soon after the last event, Ann sees Loomis speeding towards the corner store with his rifle in hand. He spends a long time searching through the old owner’s upstairs living quarters and, once he’s convinced Ann is not there, he padlocks the doors to the store, locking Ann out of the store completely.
CHAPTER 23-
Ann now realizes that Loomis is in fact luring her in towards him, by trying to starve her out. Ann wonders whether the radiation poisoning has affected Loomis’ mind, and pities him. She approaches the house to talk to him, but he shoots her ankle from the safety of the house. Ann realizes that he tried to injure her so he would be able to capture her alive.
CHAPTER 24-
It is on August 6 that Ann decides she will steal the radiation-proof suit and escape the valley, to chase her dreams of finding another place with war survivors, with children to teach. Ann knows that she must act very soon, for the cold months are approaching. One day, Loomis lures Ann into the store when he leaves the doors open, after he locked them shut for a month. His gun shot misses her, and he follows Ann with Faro. Ann retrieves her gun, and she deliberately leads the duo towards the contaminated Burden Creek. Faro, drawn by Ann’s scent, tries to jump into the creek to follow her, and the dog passes away the next morning. Ann decides it is time for her to put her big plan into action.
CHAPTER 25-
Ann recounts that she has the safe suit, and that she tricked Loomis by leaving a note on the porch asking to meet her unarmed. He reads the note and heads on out with his gun in arm. After he walks away, Ann steals the safe suit and all its pieces, from the wagon (he takes the wagon too). She knows that Loomis will attempt to kill her when he sees her with the radiation suit, but she knows she can’t leave the valley without talking to him. She puts on the suit, and waits for him on the road to Ogdentown, prepared to die.
CHAPTER 26-
Loomis discovers Ann wearing the safe suit, shoots at her and demands she take it off. When Ann brings up his murder of Edward, Loomis falters, and Ann continues, with new found courage. Ann explains to him that she wishes to live with other survivors of the war, and she argues that if he kills her, he will be alone, but if he leaves her, she could send other survivors to rescue him. Ann turns away, takes her first step of a long journey ahead, and expects Loomis to shoot her, but instead he yells out to her, and points west, saying that he saw birds circling high that way. Ann walks away, in hope of “a trace of green” on the horizon.