This is a summary of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt and it contains spoilers (including the ending). If you wish to read my thoughts with less chance of having the story spoiled, please read the review.
Three seemingly random events set this story in motion. Mae Tuck sets out to meet her sons in Treegap after ten years apart. Ten-year-old Winnie Foster is tired of the status quo and plots running away from home. A strange man in a yellow suit appears at the Foster residence in search of someone, but doesn’t say who.
While exploring the Treegap woods, Winnie spies a young boy drinking from a spring. When she asks for a drink herself, he tries to dissuade her to no avail. Soon, Winnie finds herself being scooped up and carried away by this young man, Jesse Tuck, his brother Miles and their mother. But it’s not a typical kidnapping since Winnie sees it as an opportunity for adventure…and her kidnappers seem sufficiently contrite.
The Tucks explained to Winnie that they were immortal and recalled the story of how it came to be—they all drank from a spring, the same spring from which she wanted to drink, and they needed Tuck to speak with her so she’d understand the importance of keeping their secret. And as Winnie spent time with the Tucks, she grew to care about them deeply.
Meanwhile, the man in the yellow suit, saw Winnie being lead off by the Tucks and saw his opportunity. He went back to the Fosters and made them a deal: Treegap forest in exchange for the whereabouts of their daughter. With the legal document for the wood secure in his pocket, he rides ahead to the Tucks’ residence and tries to take Winnie back from them. Mae Tuck knocks him over the head with a rifle just as the constable in riding up on his horse.
Winnie explains that she went with the Tucks of her own free will, and for the most part, they escaped the trouble for her kidnapping, but Mae is brought in because of the incident with the man in the yellow suit. If the man dies, Mae will be hung. On the flip side, if the man lives, Treegap wood (along with its secret spring) will be his.
The man eventually dies and it’s decided that Mae must die for her crime. Of course, when she’s hung, but doesn’t die, The Tucks’ secret will be on display for the whole town to see. So, Winnie along with the remaining Tucks devise a plan to break Mae out of the jail.
Late in the night, their plan is executed successfully and Winnie takes Mae’s place in the jail cell, playing decoy until the morning so the Tucks have ample time to escape. However, Jesse left Winnie with an important decision to make: in seven years, she should drink the water and go find him so they can be together forever.
The years pass and things change, as they often do, and when the Tucks return to Treegap they learn the decision that Winnie made when they see her gravestone.
