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1-Page Summary of Ghost Story
Overall Summary
Mary Downing Hahn’s novel, A Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story, is about a boy who goes to spend the summer with his aunt. He visits an old house that has shadows and noises but it turns out to be time travel. The boy meets a ghost of another boy who looks like him and he ends up helping him.
Drew’s father is an archeologist. When his parents plan a trip to France, Drew decides to stay with Aunt Blythe instead of going on the trip with them. However, when he arrives at her house, it seems like a gloomy and old place that has been left in neglect for years. The house was built by Drew’s great grandfather back in 1865 but there have been family feuds over who owns the house since then. There are even some secrets about the house that need to be uncovered before they can sell it again or renovate it properly.
Drew reluctantly enters the house, following his parents and aunt at a distance. He navigates empty rooms by listening to their voices. Drew approaches them unnoticed as his father tells Blythe that Drew is “fearful… nervous… too much imagination.”
Drew’s parents are leaving. He feels sad, but he doesn’t want to cry in front of his father. So, he runs off to a nearby room where an old man is sitting in a wheelchair. The figure hisses at Drew and says that it’s now his house and not Drew’s anymore. Aunt Blythe arrives and calms down her father (who was very agitated).
Drew is surprised to find a door in his guest bedroom that leads to the attic. He moves a rocking chair in front of it, but Blythe notices without saying anything. The next morning, she suggests they explore the attic and ease Drew’s fears. They find old photos from when Andrew was alive and Drew realizes he looks just like him. When he asks why Andrew appears only a few times, Blythe says he died young.
Drew finds a box of marbles in the attic with Andrew’s name on it, along with a warning to leave them alone. The next day, Drew gives them to Blythe for money and warns her that they may be cursed. That night, Andrew appears as an apparition in Drew’s room and is sick from diphtheria. He tells the doctor he won’t live past tonight because there isn’t any medicine available at this time period (1910). Andrew convinces Drew to trade places with him so modern medicine can save his life.
The next morning, Drew wakes up in the same room but in a different time. Hannah and his mother are excited that he’s still alive, because they thought he’d die last night. They’re surprised at how quiet Drew is; Andrew’s not usually like this because he’s bold and boisterous. They attribute it to the fever.
Drew is pretending to be Andrew, and that’s not easy. For starters, he doesn’t know anyone in the family and he doesn’t know how things work around here. Luckily, everyone thinks his confusion is due to a fever; only Edward seems suspicious of Drew’s odd behavior. When Drew calls the President by the wrong name and says there are fifty states instead of fifty states, Edward gloats about how Drew has messed up “Andrew”‘s brain with his illness.
Drew is fond of Hannah because she acts like a boy. They spend most of their time together, and he even climbs trees with her. One day, John shows up in his father’s car and becomes friends with Hannah. Drew feels jealous because he knows that they will eventually marry each other according to Aunt Blythe’s story about the family history.
Andrew and Edward are cousins. Andrew has a reputation for mischief, while Edward is known to be more docile. They inherited the family home from their father, which makes Drew’s branch of the family resentful towards them. Andrew is also prone to scrappy fistfights with his cousin, who usually wins these fights. When they fight at a soda shop one day and Theo witnesses it, he finds that Drew doesn’t put up much of a struggle against his older cousin like he does when dealing with other bullies in school.
