All the Bright Places: 56. Violet: Remaining Wanderings 1 and 2 Summary & Analysis

Violet drives down to the Kentucky border to visit the “shoe trees.” She pulls over when she gets to an intersection on a dirt road, surrounded by trees covered in shoes. Violet has a pair of green Chuck Taylors and a pair of Eleanor’s yellow Keds. She writes “Ultraviolet Remarkey-able” on her shoes and hangs them next to the Keds.

Violet sits, waiting for whatever Finch wanted her to see. She looks up and sees Finch’s sneakers high up in the tree—Finch was here. Violet reaches for her phone, but it’s in the car. She runs back to it and scrolls through her texts from Finch. His first text, a week after he left, was, “I am on the highest branch.” She reads through his other texts and then heads for the second marked destination on the map.

Violet pulls in at the site of the world’s biggest ball of paint. She hopes nobody has been here since Finch, and that she’ll still be able to read whatever Finch wrote. Mike Carmichael answers the door and leads Violet to the barn where the ball of paint lives, telling Violet how he got started (he painted thousands of coats of paint on a baseball starting in the 1970s). He leads her into a huge room with a massive ball in the middle. Mike says that he tries to paint the ball every day. Violet asks if he might remember Finch and if Finch wrote something on the ball. Mike remembers Finch and shows Violet the violet paint he used. The ball is yellow now; Violet is too late.

Mike explains that he asks people to paint over whatever they write so they leave the next person a clean slate. Violet agrees to paint a layer and asks for sky-blue paint. She feels like she’s losing Finch again as Mike locates paint the exact color of Finch’s eyes. Painting the ball is soothing, and when Violet is done, Mike hands her a guest book to sign. Violet flips back a page and finds Finch’s entry. Next to his name, he wrote the first line of Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. Violet signs her name and writes the book’s second line. Violet feels a bit better knowing that whatever Finch wrote on the ball will be there forever underneath the layers of paint.

When Violet gets home, she finds her parents in the living room. She tells them that she needs for them to talk about Eleanor; she misses Eleanor, and she’s sorry they took the A Street Bridge to begin with. She keeps going, saying that she wants to remember Finch and Eleanor—even though she can’t bring them back, and even though Finch’s death might’ve been her fault. If she keeps thinking about them, they won’t be completely gone. Violet’s mom, in tears, pulls Violet into a hug and tells Violet it wasn’t her fault. Violet’s dad cries too, and the three huddle together, sobbing.