The Last Song

ISBN-13: 9781538743287

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Publication Date: 11-07-2023

Pages: 464

Product Dimensions: 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

Nicholas Sparks is the author of twenty-four books, all of which have been New York Times bestsellers. His books have been published across more than fifty languages with over 150 million copies sold worldwide, and eleven have been adapted into films. He is also the founder of the Nicholas Sparks Foundation, a nonprofit committed to improving cultural and international understanding through global education experiences. He lives in North Carolina.

Read an Excerpt

The Last Song

Grand Central Publishing

Prologue

Ronnie

Staring out the bedroom window, Ronnie wondered whether Pastor Harris was already at the church. She assumed that he was, and as she watched the waves breaking over the beach, she questioned whether he was still able to notice the play of light as it streamed through the stained-glass window above him. Perhaps not—the window had been installed more than a month ago, after all, and he was probably too preoccupied to notice anymore. Still, she hoped that someone new in town had stumbled into the church this morning and experienced the same sense of wonder she’d had when she’d first seen the light flood the church on that cold day in November. And she hoped the visitor had taken some time to consider where the window had come from and to admire its beauty.

She’d been awake for an hour, but she wasn’t ready to face the day. The holidays felt different this year. Yesterday, she’d taken her younger brother, Jonah, for a walk down the beach. Here and there were Christmas trees on the decks of the houses they passed. At this time of year, they had the beach pretty much to themselves, but Jonah showed no interest in either the waves or the seagulls that had fascinated him only a few months earlier. Instead, he’d wanted to go to the workshop, and she’d taken him there, although he’d stayed only a few minutes before leaving without saying a single word.

On the bedstand beside her lay a stack of framed photographs from the alcove of the small beach house, along with other items she’d collected that morning. In the silence, she studied them until she was interrupted by a knock on the door. Her mom poked her head in.

“Do you want breakfast? I found some cereal in the cupboard.”

“I’m not hungry, Mom.”

“You need to eat, sweetie.”

Ronnie continued to stare at the pile of photos, seeing nothing at all. “I was wrong, Mom. And I don’t know what to do now.”

“You mean about your dad?”

“About everything.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

When Ronnie didn’t answer, her mom crossed the room and sat beside her.

“Sometimes it helps if you talk. You’ve been so quiet these last couple of days.”

For an instant, Ronnie felt a crush of memories overwhelm her: the fire and subsequent rebuilding of the church, the stained-glass window, the song she’d finally finished. She thought about Blaze and Scott and Marcus. She thought about Will. She was eighteen years old and remembering the summer she’d been betrayed, the summer she’d been arrested, the summer she’d fallen in love. It hadn’t been so long ago, yet sometimes she felt that she’d been an altogether different person back then.

Ronnie sighed. “What about Jonah?”

“He’s not here. Brian took him to the shoe store. He’s like a puppy. His feet are growing faster than the rest of him.”

Ronnie smiled, but her smile faded as quickly as it had come. In the silence that followed, she felt her mom gather her long hair and twist it into a loose ponytail on her back. Her mom had been doing that ever since Ronnie was a little girl. Strangely, she still found it comforting. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course.

“I’ll tell you what,” her mom went on. She went to the closet and put the suitcase on the bed. “Why don’t you talk while you pack?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“How about at the beginning? Jonah mentioned something about turtles?”

Ronnie crossed her arms, knowing the story hadn’t started there. “Not really,” she said. “Even though I wasn’t there when it happened, I think the summer really began with the fire.”

“What fire?”

Ronnie reached for the stack of photographs on the bedstand and gently removed a tattered newspaper article sandwiched between two framed photos. She handed the yellowing newsprint to her mother.

“This fire,” she said. “The one at the church.”

Illegal Fireworks Suspected in Church Blaze Pastor Injured

Wrightsville Beach, NC—A fire destroyed historic First Baptist Church on New Year’s Eve, and investigators suspect illegal fireworks.

Firefighters were summoned by an anonymous caller to the beachfront church just after midnight and found flames and smoke pouring from the back of the structure, said Tim Ryan, chief of the Wrightsville Beach Fire Department. The remains of a bottle rocket, an airborne firework, were found at the source of the blaze.

Pastor Charlie Harris was inside the church when the fire started and suffered second-degree burns to his arms and hands. He was transported to New Hanover Regional Medical Center and is currently in the intensive care unit.

It was the second church fire in as many months in New Hanover County. In November, Good Hope Covenant Church in Wilmington was completely destroyed. “Investigators are still treating it as suspicious, and as a case of potential arson at this point,” Ryan noted.

Witnesses report that less than twenty minutes before the fire, bottle rockets were seen being launched on the beach behind the church, likely in celebration of the New Year. “Bottle rockets are illegal in North Carolina, and are especially dangerous considering the recent drought conditions,” cautioned Ryan. “This fire shows the reason why. A man is in the hospital and the church is a total loss.”

When her mom finished reading, she looked up, meeting Ronnie’s eyes. Ronnie hesitated; then, with a sigh, she began to tell a story that still felt utterly senseless to her, even with the benefit of hindsight.

1

Ronnie

Six months earlier

Ronnie slouched in the front seat of the car, wondering why on earth her mom and dad hated her so much.

It was the only thing that could explain why she was here visiting her dad, in this godforsaken southern armpit of a place, instead of spending time with her friends back home in Manhattan.

No, scratch that. She wasn’t just visiting her dad. Visiting implied a weekend or two, maybe even a week. She supposed she could live with a visit. But to stay until late August? Pretty much the entire summer? That was banishment, and for most of the nine hours it had taken them to drive down, she’d felt like a prisoner being transferred to a rural penitentiary. She couldn’t believe her mom was actually going to make her go through with this.

Ronnie was so enveloped in misery, it took a second for her to recognize Mozart’s Sonata no. 16 in C Major. It was one of the pieces she had performed at Carnegie Hall four years ago, and she knew her mom had put it on while Ronnie was sleeping. Too bad. Ronnie reached over to turn it off.

“Why’d you do that?” her mom said, frowning. “I like hearing you play.”

“I don’t.”

“How about if I turn the volume down?”

“Just stop, Mom. Okay? I’m not in the mood.”

Ronnie stared out the window, knowing full well that her mom’s lips had just formed a tight seam. Her mom did that a lot these days. It was as if her lips were magnetized.

“I think I saw a pelican when we crossed the bridge to Wrightsville Beach,” her mom commented with forced lightness.

“Gee, that’s swell. Maybe you should call the Crocodile Hunter.”

“He died,” Jonah said, his voice floating up from the backseat, the sounds mingling with those from his Game Boy. Her ten-year-old pain-in-the-butt brother was addicted to the thing. “Don’t you remember?” he went on. “It was really sad.”

“Of course I remember.”

“You didn’t sound like you remembered.”

“Well, I did.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said what you just said.”

She didn’t bother to respond a third time. Her brother always needed the last word. It drove her crazy.

“Were you able to get any sleep at all?” her mom asked.

“Until you hit that pothole. Thanks for that, by the way. My head practically went through the glass.”

Her mom’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “I’m glad to see your nap put you in a better mood.”

Ronnie snapped her gum. Her mom hated that, which was the main reason she’d done it pretty much nonstop as they’d driven down I-95. The interstate, in her humble opinion, was just about the most boring stretch of roadway ever conceived. Unless someone was particularly fond of greasy fast food, disgusting rest-stop bathrooms, and zillions of pine trees, it could lull a person to sleep with its hypnotically ugly monotony.

She’d said those exact words to her mother in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but Mom had ignored the comments every time. Aside from trying to make nice on the trip since it was the last time they’d see each other for a while, Mom wasn’t one for conversation in the car. She wasn’t all that comfortable driving, which wasn’t surprising since they either rode the subways or took cabs when they needed to get somewhere. In the apartment, though… that was a different story. Mom had no qualms about getting into things there, and the building super had come by twice in the last couple of months to ask them to keep it down. Mom probably believed that the louder she yelled about Ronnie’s grades, or Ronnie’s friends, or the fact that Ronnie continually ignored her curfew, or the Incident—especially the Incident—the more likely it would be that Ronnie would care.

Okay, she wasn’t the worst mom. She really wasn’t. And when she was feeling generous, Ronnie might even admit that she was pretty good as far as moms went. It was just that her mom was stuck in some weird time warp in which kids never grew up, and Ronnie wished for the hundredth time that she’d been born in May instead of August. That was when she’d turn eighteen, and her mom wouldn’t be able to force her to do anything. Legally, she’d be old enough to make her own decisions, and let’s just say that coming down here wasn’t on her to-do list.

But right now, Ronnie had no choice in the matter. Because she was still seventeen. Because of a trick of the calendar. Because Mom conceived three months earlier than she should have. What was that about? No matter how fiercely Ronnie had begged or complained or screamed or whined about the summer plans, it hadn’t made the tiniest bit of difference. Ronnie and Jonah were spending the summer with their dad, and that was final. No if, ands, or buts about it, was the way her mom had phrased it. Ronnie had learned to despise that expression.

Just off the bridge, summer traffic had slowed the line of cars to a crawl. Off to the side, between the houses, Ronnie caught glimpses of the ocean. Yippee. Like she was supposed to care.

“Why again are you making us do this?” Ronnie groaned.

“We’ve already been through this,” her mom answered. “You need to spend time with your dad. He misses you.”

“But why all summer? Couldn’t it just be for a couple of weeks?”

“You need more than a couple of weeks together. You haven’t seen him in three years.”

“That’s not my fault. He’s the one who left.”

“Yes, but you haven’t taken his calls. And every time he came to New York to see you and Jonah, you ignored him and hung out with your friends.”

Ronnie snapped her gum again. From the corner of her eye, she saw her mother wince.

“I don’t want to see or talk to him,” Ronnie said.

“Just try to make the best of it, okay? Your father is a good man and he loves you.”

“Is that why he walked out on us?”

Instead of answering, her mom glanced up into the rearview mirror.

“You’ve been looking forward to this, haven’t you, Jonah?”

“Are you kidding? This is going to be great!”

“I’m glad you have a good attitude. Maybe you could teach your sister.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I just don’t see why I can’t spend the summer with my friends,” Ronnie whined, cutting back in. She wasn’t done yet. Though she knew the odds were slim to none, she still harbored the fantasy that she could convince her mom to turn the car around.

“Don’t you mean you’d rather spend all night at the clubs? I’m not naive, Ronnie. I know what goes on in those kinds of places.”

“I don’t do anything wrong, Mom.”

“What about your grades? And your curfew? And—”

“Can we talk about something else?” Ronnie cut in. “Like why it’s so imperative that I spend time with my dad?”

Her mother ignored her. Then again, Ronnie knew she had every reason to. She’d already answered the question a million times, even if Ronnie didn’t want to accept it.

Traffic eventually started to move again, and the car moved forward for half a block before coming to another halt. Her mother rolled down the window and tried to peer around the cars in front of her.

“I wonder what’s going on,” she muttered. “It’s really packed down here.”

“It’s the beach,” Jonah volunteered. “It’s always crowded at the beach.”

“It’s three o’clock on a Sunday. It shouldn’t be this crowded.”

Ronnie tucked her legs up, hating her life. Hating everything about this.

“Hey, Mom?” Jonah asked. “Does Dad know Ronnie was arrested?”

“Yeah. He knows,” she answered.

“What’s he going to do?”

This time, Ronnie answered. “He won’t do anything. All he ever cared about was the piano.”

Ronnie hated the piano and swore she’d never play again, a decision even some of her oldest friends thought was strange, since it had been a major part of her life for as long as she’d known them. Her dad, once a teacher at Juilliard, had been her teacher as well, and for a long time, she’d been consumed by the desire not only to play, but to compose original music with her father.

She was good, too. Very good, actually, and because of her father’s connection to Juilliard, the administration and teachers there were well aware of her ability. Word slowly began to spread in the obscure “classical music is all-important” grapevine that constituted her father’s life. A couple of articles in classical music magazines followed, and a moderately long piece in The New York Times that focused on the father-daughter connection came next, all of which eventually led to a coveted appearance in the Young Performers series at Carnegie Hall four years ago. That, she supposed, was the highlight of her career. And it was a highlight; she wasn’t naive about what she’d accomplished. She knew how rare an opportunity like that was, but lately she’d found herself wondering whether the sacrifices had been worth it. No one besides her parents probably even remembered the performance, after all. Or even cared. Ronnie had learned that unless you had a popular video on YouTube or could perform shows in front of thousands, musical ability meant nothing.

Sometimes she wished her father had started her on the electric guitar. Or at the very least, singing lessons. What was she supposed to do with an ability to play the piano? Teach music at the local school? Or play in some hotel lobby while people were checking in? Or chase the hard life her father had? Look where the piano had gotten him. He’d ended up quitting Juilliard so he could hit the road as a concert pianist and found himself playing in rinky-dink venues to audiences that barely filled the first couple of rows. He traveled forty weeks a year, long enough to put a strain on the marriage. Next thing she knew, Mom was yelling all the time and Dad was retreating into his shell like he usually did, until one day he simply didn’t return from an extended southern tour. As far as she knew, he wasn’t working at all these days. He wasn’t even giving private lessons.

How did that work out for you, Dad?

She shook her head. She really didn’t want to be here. God knows she wanted nothing to do with any of this.

“Hey, Mom!” Jonah called out. He leaned forward. “What’s over there? Is that a Ferris wheel?”

Her mom craned her neck, trying to see around the minivan in the lane beside her. “I think it is, honey,” she answered. “There must be a carnival in town.”

“Can we go? After we all have dinner together?”

“You’ll have to ask your dad.”

“Yeah, and maybe afterward, we’ll all sit around the campfire and roast marshmallows,” Ronnie interjected. “Like we’re one big, happy family.”

This time, both of them ignored her.

“Do you think they have other rides?” Jonah asked.

“I’m sure they do. And if your dad doesn’t want to ride them, I’m sure your sister will go with you.”

“Awesome!”

Ronnie sagged in her seat. It figured her mom would suggest something like that. The whole thing was too depressing to believe.

Questions and Explanations for the Prologue and Chapter 1

The questions in this book serve multiple purposes. Not only are they designed to check your comprehension and understanding of The Last Song, but they also encourage you to think critically about the literary text. It’s important not only to know what happens in the novel, but also to be able to analyze the text and make connections outside of it. In addition, the questions check your knowledge of essential literary terms and your knowledge of standard grammar and usage rules, as well as your vocabulary. The formats of the questions mirror those found in important standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT.

You should do your best to answer each question. If you are having difficulty, a detailed explanation to guide your reasoning process is provided after each question. It is designed to teach you how to answer the question rather than just providing you with the correct answer. Reading the explanation will be beneficial even if you are certain of your response; use it to verify that you have the correct response.

The ten questions on the prologue and chapter 1 focus on grammar and usage, vocabulary, literary terms, characterization, and style. Some of the questions combine two or more of these areas, requiring you to synthesize your knowledge, make inferences, and interpret the text. The questions are designed to determine both your current level of understanding of the novel and your ability to answer higher-level questions.

The following sentence tests your ability to recognize grammar and usage errors. The sentence contains either a single error or no error at all. If the sentence contains an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed to make the sentence correct. If there is no error, select choice D.

Ronnie’s mother many steps to ensure that her daughter enjoys the summer with her father, not engaging her in verbal sparring during their drive New York to North Carolina.

In order to answer this question correctly, you must be able to understand what is being tested. Choice A tests verb tense, choice B questions the placement of a modifier, and choice C questions the appropriate preposition.

Most students recognize past, present, and future tense—for example, “I ate” (past), “I eat” (present), and “I will eat” (future). When you use have or has with a form of the verb, you are indicating that the action has started in the past and continues into the present. For example, “Ronnie has eaten cereal for breakfast since she was four years old.” This indicates that she started eating cereal years ago and continues to do so. For choice A, if Ronnie’s mother’s actions began in the past and continue into the present, then has taken is the correct verb tense.

Choice B analyzes the writer’s clarity. Writers should place modifiers (words or groups of words that describe another word) as close as possible to the word being described. For example, is the modifier clear in the sentence, “I ate a burger in the new restaurant that wasn’t very good”? In this example, the modifier that wasn’t very good describes restaurant because that is the word nearest to it. But if the writer intended to state that the burger wasn’t very good, the sentence needs to be written this way: “At the new restaurant, I ate a burger that wasn’t very good.” If the descriptive words are in the wrong location in a sentence, they are called misplaced modifiers. In the sample sentence, the modifier beginning with including follows the word father. Is that the word that the modifier is describing, or is the modifier misplaced? Should the modifier be moved to a better location in the sentence, or is this the best place for it?

Choice C questions the choice of prepositions. Standard usage has movement occurring from a point of origin to (or toward) the point of destination.

The following two questions test your vocabulary. Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

Ronnie was _______ about not enjoying spending her summer with her father, no matter what her mother and brother said.

1. adamant

2. adept

3. adroit

4. adumbrate

In order to select the best word, you not only need to know the definition of the word, but you also need to insert the words into the sentence to make sure the resulting sentence makes sense.

Adamant, choice A, means utterly unyielding, despite pleas to the contrary. Adept, choice B, means quite skilled. Adroit, choice C, means skillful. And adumbrate, choice D, means to foreshadow somewhat, or give vague clues about future events.

Although Jonah appears _______ to spend time with his father, Ronnie is _______ to even visit him.

1. resolved… resistant

2. reluctant… fortunate

3. eager… disinclined

4. excited… enthusiastic

Not only do you need to know the words’ definitions to answer this question, you also must use both words in the sentence to make sure the resulting sentence makes sense. In addition, notice the clues in the sentence. The word although sets up a contrast; the structure of the sentence indicates that the two words are going to have dissimilar or even opposite meanings.

In choice A, resolved means determined and resistant means in opposition to. In choice B, reluctant means hesitant and fortunate means lucky. In choice C, eager means looking forward to and disinclined means lacking desire. In choice D, excited means emotionally aroused and enthusiastic means eagerly interested.

Question 4 asks you to analyze how an author’s choices contribute to the novel’s overall structure and meaning.

The last sentence of the prologue, “Ronnie hesitated; then, with a sigh, she began to tell a story that still felt utterly senseless to her, even with the benefit of hindsight,” achieves each of the following goals EXCEPT:

1. revealing the basic narrative structure of the entire novel

2. indicating that the primary narrative will be told in the form of a flashback

3. demonstrating that Ronnie is an unreliable narrator

4. showing that Ronnie hasn’t had time to fully process the events of the past summer

First, reread the sentence to see what you notice. The question indicates that three of the four choices are indeed revealed through the sentence.

Choice A mentions narrative structure, which is the way the story is going to be told. Some stories are linear—the plot follows a straight line from beginning to end. Others are circular in nature, where bits and pieces of the story are revealed one at a time, like peeling away layers of an onion. The structure also refers to techniques that an author may use, such as flashbacks, dialogue, letters, and framing (a story within a story).

Choice B mentions flashback, which is a narrative technique where the narrator takes the reader back in time. A flashback is a device that an author might choose to use as a part of his or her narrative structure; in this case, the two terms are closely intertwined.

Choice C uses the term unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is one of two things: someone who cannot or does not fully understand the world around him or her, which means his or her judgments cannot be trusted by the reader, or someone who may have a reason to be purposely misleading the reader. For example, Huckleberry Finn is too young to fully understand the significance of events that he is narrating in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The term unreliable narrator does not mean that the character is a liar or morally no good; rather, he or she may just be naive.

Choice D is a test of your comprehension. Does the sentence state that Ronnie hasn’t had enough time to deal with the events of the summer?

Question 5 tests your comprehension and your ability to use strong and thorough textual evidence to draw an inference from the text.

All of the following contrasts are either mentioned directly or alluded to in the prologue EXCEPT those between:

1. religious and atheistic beliefs

2. summer and winter

3. the present and the past

4. right and wrong

The inference that you draw will be based on the details provided in the text. For example, words such as buds, new growth, and warmer temperatures may make you infer that the writer is referring to the season of spring, even if the word spring is not specifically used.

You should eliminate choice A if both religious and atheistic beliefs are mentioned or alluded to in the prologue. You should eliminate choice B if both summer and winter are mentioned. You should eliminate choice C if a time prior to the current time period is mentioned, and you should eliminate choice D if the prologue refers to correct or incorrect decisions made by the characters. What is not eliminated will be your answer.

Question 6 requires you to make an inference based on textual evidence.

What is the primary purpose of the prologue?

1. to provide exposition

2. to build suspense

3. to develop the protagonist

4. to establish the conflict

The key word in the question is primary, which means main. Therefore, although many of the choices may be true of the prologue, one of the choices should clearly outweigh the others.

The exposition, choice A, is the background information, which answers all the questions that a reporter asks—who, what, where, when, why, and how? Suspense, choice B, is a situation where more questions are raised than are answered. The goal of building suspense is to entice the reader to keep on reading. The protagonist, choice C, is the main character. Not only should the prologue mention the protagonist, readers should also learn a lot about who the character is and what the character is like. The conflict, choice D, is the main problem or issue of the novel.

Question 7 tests your knowledge of literary terms.

“She’d felt like a prisoner being transferred to a rural penitentiary.” Identify the literary term used in this sentence.

1. allusion

2. metaphor

3. personification

4. simile

Knowing about figures of speech will help you answer this question. An allusion, choice A, is an indirect reference. Some of the most common types of allusions are historical (when someone meets his Waterloo, it’s a reference to Napoleon); biblical (such as John Coffey in The Green Mile being a Christ figure); mythological (a reference to a Greek or Roman myth, such as someone having the Midas touch; and literary, a reference to a character in a work of literature, such as a couple being similar to Romeo and Juliet). A metaphor, choice B, is a comparison between two unlike things not using a connective word—for example, “Michael Phelps was a flying fish in the pool.” Personification, choice C, is giving nonhuman things a human characteristic, such as in “Opportunity knocked on the door.” And a simile, choice D, is a comparison of unlike things using a connective word, such as like, as, or than—for example, “She looked as fresh as the morning snow.”

Question 8 tests your comprehension and your ability to differentiate among different types of irony.