63 pages • 2 hours read
Shiver
A 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 43-56Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 43 Summary: “Grace”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of violence, trauma, and depictions of death.
To Grace’s surprise, Olivia is in school the next day. Grace catches hold of her in the parking lot and asks her why she has been avoiding her. Olivia tells Grace that one day she was photographing wolves as usual when she saw Jack change into a human. Since Jack was disoriented and naked, she took him home and gave him her brother’s clothes. Jack cautioned her against telling anyone about him. Olivia felt sorry for Jack and helped him for a few days by giving him food and washing his clothes, but they had a fight over his cure. Grace is stung that even though Olivia learnt Grace was right about Jack, she never apologized for dismissing Grace’s hunch. Grace tells Olivia that Isabel knows about Jack from the pictures she left around and Olivia needs to be more careful. Grace leaves, feeling uneasy about the conversation with Olivia.
Grace’s bad mood worsens when she gets a voice note from her mother saying that her parents will be staying out the night. Sam decides to give Grace a break by taking her to a candy shop in Duluth, his hometown. At the candy shop, Sam and Grace stock up on cady like little children, giddy with joy. They drink hot chocolate and the attendant at the counter tells them they look like the perfect couple. Grace tells her she and Sam have been in love for six years, making Sam choke up with emotion. Outside the shop, Grace notes a set of abandoned men’s clothes and pawprints on the earth, suggesting a human tracked them, transformed into a wolf, and bolted into the forest.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Sam”
On the drive back from Duluth, Sam gets a call from Beck. Beck wants to meet Sam to explain himself, but Sam hangs up. Ever since their last meeting, Sam has had a horrible realization. Sam believes his attack was not accidental but planned by Beck. Sam now remembers he was waiting for the school bus when two wolves dragged him away. However, the wolves bit him just enough to draw blood, and left him. Beck arrived later, pretending to be his rescuer. The eyewitnesses that saw the wolves who’d attacked Sam said one of the wolves was black. Sam can now see this was Paul.
Back at her parents’ house, Grace kisses Sam. She asks Sam to let go of his fears. The two have sex for the first time.
Chapter 45 Summary: “Grace”
The next day, Beck calls on Sam’s phone again, this time to share the news that Paul barely survived an attack by another wolf. The wolf or wolves who bit Paul wanted to kill him, because they left innumerable small bites all over his body—the best way to finish off a werewolf. Sam tersely asks Beck if one of the wolves he turned caused the attack. Beck responds that the new wolves were indoors during the attack. He asks Sam to come see him.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Grace”
Sam asks Grace how she’d like to spend the day after school. Grace, who briefly spoke to Beck during his call, responds that she’d like to meet the older wolf. She knows Beck has practically been a father to Sam. Whatever Sam’s disagreement with Beck may be, Sam needs to make peace with him. Sam reluctantly agrees. Before dropping Grace to school, Sam asks Grace if she slept with him to get back at her parents. Enraged at the question, Grace steps out of the car. Sam apologizes to her. He only asked the question because he still cannot believe he is worthy of Grace’s love. The two make up.
Chapter 47 Summary: “Sam”
Sam visits the Culpeper estate again in search of Jack. At the edge of the woods skirting the main house, he overhears Isabel arguing with Jack, now in human form. Jack ate Isabel’s dog Chloe for sustenance, which enrages Isabel. Jack tells Isabel he has found a cure for his condition, and will fix it soon, though he doesn’t elaborate further. After Isabel leaves for school, Jack heads to the kitchen to fix himself some food. Sam follows.
Sam finally meets Jack, introducing himself as someone who has also been bitten. He asks Jack about the cure; Jack responds the cure lies with his schoolmate Grace (Jack does not know Sam, or his connection with Grace), since she is the only one who was bitten and did not change. Jack will get the cure out of Grace one way or the other. The mention of Grace raises Sam’s hackles. He asks Jack to stay away from her. Jack grabs a knife to attack Sam, but changes into a wolf and runs out. Sam follows him, wanting to confine Jack to keep Grace and the others safe.
Chapter 48 Summary: “Grace”
Grace is surprised to see Sam and her car absent from the school parking lot. Sam is always waiting for Grace in her Bronco when school ends. Grace waits for Sam. Finally, she sees her Bronco pull up and gets into the passenger seat. It’s only then she realizes that the driver is Jack, rather than Sam. Panicked, Grace asks him about Sam and Jack races the car out of the lot. He tells Grace that if she wants to see Sam again, she must tell him about the cure. Grace replies that there is no cure. She does not know why she did not turn after being bitten. Jack screams that Grace is lying and drives erratically. He tells Grace that he bit Olivia to get answers, but in vain. Grace is horrified.
Thinking on her feet, Grace tells Jack that she does know the cure, which is in the form of a vaccine. Grace can take Jack to it. She goes on to direct Jack to Beck’s house and calls Beck on the way, pretending that he knows the cure and will keep it ready for Jack. She manages to communicate to Beck that she is bringing a dangerous wolf over.
Chapter 49 Summary: “Sam”
Sam—knocked out cold by Jack—wakes up in an icy tool shed. He tries to open the door, but it is jammed. Sam knows it is not yet cold enough for him to turn, but that point is only a few hours away.
Chapter 50 Summary: “Grace”
Jack pushes Grace into Beck’s house to make sure there are no attackers lurking. The house is cold and Jack transforms into a wolf. Beck charges in and makes Jack submit on a rug. He and Grace wrap Jack in the rug, carry him to the bathroom, and lock him in. Beck calls Sam’s cell to get his whereabouts. Sam answers in a broken voice that he is in a shed on Isabel’s estate. Grace calls up Isabel and asks her to check the outhouses on her property. Isabel finds Sam in the garden shed and covers him with her coat.
Chapter 51 Summary: “Grace”
Grace rushes to Isabel’s house and finds she has placed Sam in front of the fire to warm him up. Isabel tells Grace Sam has been throwing up. Grace hugs Sam. He tells her that he is on the verge of transforming. He wants to see Beck before he changes into a wolf forever. As Grace waits for Sam to stabilize a bit before taking him to Beck, her mind races to find a possible cure. Taking a wolf to a hot climate doesn’t help, as their body’s thermostat simply adjusts to the new weather pattern. However, she thinks, perhaps raising the internal temperature could help. Grace thinks she did not turn because she got hyperthermia right after her attack. But there is no way to induce an extremely high fever with Sam. Isabel suggests there may be a way.
Isabel’s mom volunteers at a clinic, where a man recently contracted meningitis and a fever of 107 degrees. Perhaps infecting Sam and Jack with blood from a meningitis patient may help. The only problem is that meningitis may be fatal, as it was in the case of the patient.
Chapter 52 Summary: “Grace”
Grace can smell Sam’s scent grow increasingly wolf-like as she drives him to Beck’s house. Sam tells Grace he wants to try Isabel’s cure even if he may die in the process. The risk is worth it if he gets to stay with Grace as a human. Grace confirms that she wants Sam to stay with her forever but is ambivalent about the dangerous experiment. Just then, a deer hits the windshield of the car, cracking it. Cold air rushes in and the car stalls. Grace calls 911 but knows Sam won’t last until the paramedics arrive. The temperature outside is near freezing. Sam asks Grace to call Beck so he can say goodbye to him. Beck tells Sam that he recruited the teenagers with their consent, but he is sorry that he turned Sam without his. Sam forgives Beck. They express their love for each other. Sam hangs up and changes into a wolf before Grace’s eyes.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Sam”
Sam shivers and reaches out an arm to Grace as if to say goodbye and runs off into the woods.
Chapter 54 Summary: “Grace”
When the paramedics arrive, Grace is alone in the car.
Chapter 55 Summary: “Sam”
Sam goes back to watching Grace from the woods, like he always does as a wolf. He hardly knows her name in this state, thinking of her as “the girl” (343). He sees her sitting in the yard and knows she does this to see if the cold will transform her too. However, nothing works. The girl’s father arrives on the deck and hauls her inside. As she leaves, Sam’s human thoughts fade away too.
Chapters 43-55 Analysis
An ominous atmosphere and a note of tragedy mark the progression of these chapters as Stiefvater ends the section on the cliffhanger of Sam’s final transformation, posing the implicit question: Did the cure work? The harsh winter landscape, portrayed through striking visual imagery, reflects the inner turmoil of the characters. For instance, driving to the Culpeper house, Sam notes that “the pines were colorless with the promise of snow, their tips waving slightly in a cold wind” (305). As Grace drives to find Sam, “sleet dance[s] off [her] windshield […] and the pines [seem] to swallow the headlights” (331). The coming of winter and the loss of light signifies despair and hopelessness—the ticking clock of Sam’s permanent shift to his wolf form.
Stiefvater sets up several mysteries in this section that lay the groundwork for the plots of the remaining books in the series, creating a narrative bridge from Shiver to Linger, the second book in the series. For instance, the identity of the wolves who attack Paul, biting him in a manner designed to kill him, is not revealed, leaving an open plot point to be resolved in the sequels to Shiver. Stiefvater also leaves Grace’s eventual transformation ambiguous, creating tension that propels the plot in subsequent installments of the narrative. She makes clear that a change did occur in Grace after she was bitten, but leaves the details of how and when the change will manifest unknown.
Continuing the motif of flawed parental figures, the grown-ups in this section often behave in questionable ways, leaving the younger characters to deal with the consequences. For example, the reveal that Beck did, in fact, deliberately turn Sam without his consent because he recognized Sam as his successor creates deep inner turmoil for Sam. Though Sam eventually forgives Beck for turning him, the text does not paper over the fact that Beck’s decision is morally complex. Stiefvater frames Beck’s “saving” Sam from his parents—a choice that sparks a chain of events that leads to Sam’s parents nearly killing him—as ethically ambiguous. Similarly, Grace’s parents’ blasé treatment of Shelby’s body—Grace’s father leaves the body on the porch, assuming her mother will call animal control to remove it—leads to Shelby’s attack on Paul—though this is only made explicit later in the series. The fact that Grace’s parents leave her alone after Shelby’s attack further reinforces their neglect of her and emphasizes The Importance of Finding One’s Pack.
Structurally, Grace and Sam’s candy-shop visit provides a brief reprieve from the tense stakes of the central plot. Stiefvater describes the outing using strong visual and scent-related imagery, immersing the characters in a child-like world of delight. Grace notes the “salty bite of pretzels, the bright smell of lemon, the brittle edge of anise” (279). The candy shop becomes a metaphor for fleeting innocence and childhood, representing a warm, glowing sanctuary from the harsh, wintry reality of the outside world. The visit to the candy shop parallels Grace and Sam’s visit to the bookstore in the previous section. Books, like food, act as a refuge and a respite in the novel, reinforced by the sequence in which Isabel and Grace make quiche together.
Grace and Sam’s physical intimacy creates another fragile sanctuary for the characters that marks the apex of their romance and represents a rite of passage in their coming-of-age arcs. Both Sam and Grace feel they have grown up as a result of their connection, finally emerging as their own people. While the candy-shop sequence and the sex scene between Grace and Sam represent peaceful interludes, Stiefvater immediately juxtaposes them with life-threatening situations, maintaining the story’s momentum and emphasizing the novel’s thematic interest in The Power and Limits of Love. The day after Sam and Grace make love for the first time, Sam ends up stranded in Jack’s shed, while Grace is nearly abducted by Jack. Though Grace and Sam reunite, the cold forces Sam to change into a wolf, possibly forever. This bleak turn of events is narrated in a tense, pacy style, contrasted with Sam’s ruminative, melancholy voice. For instance, after Sam transforms, he notes in Chapter 53 that he is “crashing into the trembling void / stretching my hand to you / losing myself to frigid regret” (341). Sam’s narration is structured as a poem—fragments to reflect his slipping grasp of words. While Grace feels a sense of despair at Sam’s loss, the narrative preserves hope in the form of Isabel’s cure. The fact that Isabel suggests the cure underscores her growing solidarity with Grace. Isabel and Grace’s mutual cooperation serves as their only refuge in an unstable, unpredictable world as the plot escalates toward the climax.
Unlock all 63 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Maggie Stiefvater
