Sharon Creech's novel Walk Two Moons is a story about a young girl named Salamanca "Sal" Tree Hiddle. Sal is taking a road trip with her grandparents to Idaho to visit her mother's final resting place and shares a story with them along the way. Most of Sal's story is about her best friend, a girl named Phoebe Winterbottom.
While the girls have different personalities, they have one thing in common—Sal and Phoebe both have mothers who have left home. Phoebe believes that her mother has been kidnapped.
As Sal continues telling her story to her grandparents, she discusses an old brick fireplace that her father discovered after her mother left. Sal's father was chipping away at the plaster on the wall until he uncovered this fireplace. Sal alludes to the fact that her story is like this fireplace when compared to Phoebe's story. She means that while their life stories are similar and related, Phoebe's story ultimately takes center stage while Sal's story is hidden in the shadows. Sal learns that she can uncover things about her own life just like her father uncovers the the fireplace.
Sal draws an analogy between Phoebe's story and an old brick fireplace uncovered by her father on the night her mother left. Sal's father had gradually chipped away at a plaster wall in the farmhouse until he made his unexpected discovery. Just as the old fireplace was hidden behind a wall, so Sal's story is hidden behind Phoebe's. What Sal means by this is that her own story is intimately related to that of Phoebe. The memories that she has of Phoebe will always be there, never to be forgotten. At the same time, though, Sal can choose to build her own life, just as someone once built a wall over the old fireplace. It's her own life, but it wouldn't be possible for her to build it without the foundations provided by her relationship with Phoebe.
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