Chapters 27 and 28 Summary

New Year's Eve arrives and the children are allowed to stay up to ring in the new year and the new millennium. Callie's father reassures them that rumors that the world will end at midnight are not true, and everyone must follow their annual tradition of making resolutions and announcing them to the family. Callie thinks carefully about hers, feeling torn between a desire to go on living together with her family and her desire for dramatic change and a life far beyond Fentress. When she announces her resolutions, they are actually a list of places and things she wants to see before she dies. Grandfather's resolution is to drive an automobile. As Callie looks around at her family, she realizes she is very blessed and that her grandfather is her greatest gift of all.

In the book's final chapter, Callie...