Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine Summary | Plot Summary

Dandelion Wine explores the fabric of a small Midwestern town in the summer of 1928. It interweaves individual stories, primarily through the eyes of twelve year-old Douglas Spaulding. While venturing through a forest with Father and brother, Tom, on the first day of summer, Douglas discovers he is truly alive. With a new awareness that probes all his senses, he decides to keep track of two parts of summer. He records rituals, such as gathering fox grapes, as well as new revelations like the newfound knowledge that adults and children are different species. Douglas' first rites of summer are collecting dandelions for Grandfather's dandelion wine and finding a way to acquire new sneakers to be able to keep up with his friends on the trails. One early summer night, Douglas plays in the ravine with his friends. His mother gets scared when Douglas does not return, because the Lonely One, a local murderer, has struck again. Fortunately, they find Douglas safe.

Many individual stories of Green Town's citizens then unfold. Inventor, Leo Auffmann, fights with his wife about the benefits of building a Happiness Machine. By the time he completes it, his family is fighting and the house is in disarray. The Happiness Machine, tested by his wife, only brings misery as it holds magical wonders she will never actually experience. The machine catches on fire and is destroyed. Leo realizes that he had happiness all along and it is not something that can be built. Helen Bentley, an elderly widow, befriends Tom and two girls. The children don't believe that she was ever a young girl or has a first name. She tries to prove the existence of her childhood with her large collection of artifacts. Still the children refuse to believe her. She decides to give up her past, and all her memorabilia, to live in the present like the children.

Good friends Charlie Woodman and John Huff take Douglas to see a Time Machine. The living machine is elderly Colonel Freeleigh. With his memory, he takes the boys back in time from watching buffalo thunder across the plains to civil war battles. Just before his death, Colonel Freeleigh places a call to Mexico City to hear the hustle and bustle of a place he visited in his youth, his last way of feeling truly alive. Elderly sisters Miss Fern and Miss Roberta drive the Green Machine, an electric two-seater scooter. They are often seen silently rolling around town and let boys like Douglas hitch a ride now and then. However, one day, they run over a man and leave his lifeless body on the ground in a panic. The sisters agree to never ride the Green Machine again, even though it turns out the man was unharmed. Mr. Tridden, conductor of Green Town's trolley, offers the children a free ride the day before it is to be replaced with a bus. Douglas is upset. The Green Machine no longer runs. His sneakers are starting to wear, and now the trolley will disappear.

Douglas and Tom have their own unique stories. One of Douglas' worst days is when John Huff announces he is moving away. The boys play games and try to make time stretch, but inevitably John ends up on a train out of town. Douglas feels angry about the loss and makes Tom promise never to leave him. Meanwhile, Tom gets unwittingly involved with Elmira Brown, an accidental prone jealous woman. Elmira believes a neighbor, Clara Goodwater, is a witch, which is why she is always elected president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, a position Elmira covets. To thwart Clara's powers, Elmira drags Tom to the lodge as a symbol of innocence and drinks a potent remedy. She gets so sick from the drink that she falls down a steep flight of stairs, though amazingly is not hurt. Feeling guilty, Clara promises Elmira that she will be next president of the lodge.

Over time, Douglas is growing despondent about the loss of his friend, Colonel Freeleigh, and all the old fashioned delights that are disappearing, like the trolley and Green Machine. One day he joins young newspaper journalist Bill Forrester for an ice cream at the drugstore. They meet 95-year-old Helen Loomis. Bill and Helen connect and for the next three weeks, Helen shares stories with him about her travels and philosophies. They recognize that if they had been born at different times so they were the same age, they would have fallen in love. Sadly, Helen dies toward the end of summer. It makes Douglas wonder what ever happened to happy endings. One night, the Lonely One strikes again, killing a local woman. His next intended victim is a determined, independent woman, who manages to kill him with a pair of sewing shears. The children are upset because, to them, the Lonely One was a mythological being that could never be annihilated. They convince themselves that the slain man is not actually the Lonely One, who is therefore still at large. Douglas suffers a more personal loss, the death of his Great-grandma. On her deathbed, she explains that she will always be around, because no person really dies who has a family. After her death Douglas realizes a scary truth - some day he too must die.

Desperate to reconcile feelings of life and death, Douglas seeks wisdom from a wax tarot figure at the arcade. He believes that the real Mme. Tarot is entombed in the figure as a source of punishment and wants to rescue her. After a great deal of effort, Douglas and Tom steal the figure, but the arcade owner catches up and smashes it down a ravine. After Father helps repair it, a blank card slips from her sleeve. Douglas interprets it to mean that he and Tom will get all their wishes and live forever. Nevertheless, the summer turmoil catches up with Douglas, and he becomes deathly ill. In his feverish state, Douglas dreams of all the losses of summer. Tom is terrified that Douglas will die and seeks help from Jonas, a local junk dealer. That night, Jonas gives Douglas two bottles of arctic air. The next morning Douglas shows signs of improving. Once recovered, Douglas wants to pay Jonas back by passing on something meaningful to others. When an annoying aunt tries to disrupt Grandma's kitchen, and she looses her natural culinary touch, Douglas sneaks into the pristine kitchen at night and returns it to its former messy state. Grandma wakes up and prepares a feast that the lodgers and family delight in until sunrise. Douglas feels that he has paid Jonas back with this satisfying result.

Summer ends much like it began, except in reverse. The porch swing comes down, windows are shuttered, and doors closed. Douglas plans to look at the dandelion bottles that mark each day of summer so he'll never forget how remarkable it was. He watches the people of Green Town go to sleep from his grandparents' house on the last day of summer, orchestrated in their predictable patterns by his imagination.