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Chapters 11–14

Summary: Chapter 11

When Ty and Jess enter Ginny’s kitchen dirty from farm work, Jess stays for dinner. They talk about the Ericsons and Jimmy Carter. They move to the porch and talk about whether Jess will stay with Harold and Loren. Ty invites Jess to rent some of his land if he wants to try farming next year. Jess admits his uncertainty. As night falls, they talk about a gruesome family murder that happened in Dubuque. Jess leaves. Ginny and Ty agree that it would be nice to have him nearby. 

Summary: Chapter 12

Ginny, Rose, Jess, Pete, and Ty begin a Monopoly game that lasts for two weeks, full of lively conversation. Pete tells stories about hitchhiking in the 1960s, and Jess tells one about being in a bar in Vancouver. Jess reports that his father Harold wants to replace his kitchen floor with cement and a drain. Soon, Larry takes delivery of $1,000 kitchen cabinets, which he leaves in the driveway. When rain threatens and Ginny tells him to bring them inside, he tells her to stop telling him what to do. The cabinets get soaked. Rose is furious about it. Ginny and Rose’s daughter, Pammy, make popcorn. Pammy asks if Grandpa is crazy and says that her mother won’t let the girls be alone with him. The adults talk more about Larry and agree that he is out of control. 

Summary: Chapter 13

Ginny takes Pammy and Linda swimming in Pike. On the way, the girls confess that they don’t like being in boarding school and miss their friends. Ginny thinks about her loneliness as a teenager and Rose’s sassy and sociable ways, unlike her own. At the pool, Pammy sees someone she knows, and Ginny sees Mary Livingston, who had been friends with her mother. Mary tells Ginny that they are selling their farm and moving away. Mary has lost two sons, one in Vietnam. Mary mentions Rose’s cancer. Mary confides that Ginny’s mother was afraid for her daughters before she died. Something unspoken hangs in the air, something about Ginny not standing up to her father. The kids return from eating popsicles, and Mary leaves. Ginny is rattled by the conversation. She goes swimming and thinks about her mother and wishes she could remember more about her. They stay late and drive home. 

Summary: Chapter 14

Back at home, Ty and Pete install an air conditioner as Rose makes dinner. Caroline calls to say that Larry has been to her office while she was in New York. She asks Ginny if they signed the transfer papers and suggests that they didn’t have to do it. When Ginny tells Rose about the conversation, Rose is angry that Caroline hasn’t been more present for them. Out at the grill, Ginny confides to Jess that this is the day when everything she is worried about happens, a comment he does not understand. The family enjoys a good meal in the cool air.

The next Sunday, the family gathers at Larry’s for Father’s Day, an awkward meal that no one enjoys. The men talk about a hailstorm in Story County, and Ginny asks Larry if he’s been to Des Moines, a question he dodges. That night, Ty observes that the sisters don’t understand Larry. Ginny says she doesn’t feel like anything is different since the transfer, that Larry still controls them all, but Ty disagrees. He encourages her to let go of what she can. They snuggle and Ty sleeps, leaving Ginny to think about her father and his history. She recalls a time when Harold was pinned under his truck in the mud, and Larry told Ginny to take him a bottle of whiskey to help the pain. With tears, she recalls him telling her that she was a good girl.

Analysis: Chapters 11–14

These chapters open with Ginny’s musing about Jess Clark, imagining that her recent intimacies with him might somehow influence her ability to have a baby. In the ensuing chapters, Jess becomes part of the family gathered around the table at the Monopoly games, relegated to a guest rather than an attraction.

A growing sense of tension and anxiety in Ginny dominates the narrative in these chapters. She does not yet understand the source, but she does feel something coming on. She can describe it, but she cannot name it. Ginny says she senses treachery constantly. It’s slippery, like mud, like the farm before it was drained. Her prediction to Jess that this is the day when everything unravels is another clue to the reader that things are mounting to a crescendo.

Ginny’s encounter with Mary Livingston in Chapter 13 unnerves her. Mary reveals things about Ginny’s mother that Ginny already senses, things hidden and secret. When Mary reveals that she knew what Ginny’s father was like, Ginny listens, but Mary is never explicit. Mary tells her that Ginny’s mother feared what kind of life she’d live after her mother died, prompting a long silence. Mary’s words leave Ginny breathless, and she goes for a swim to find relief, feeling her dead mother’s fears as a growing, impinging presence. Ginny knew her mother for only ten years, hardly time to know her at all. The parallel between Rose and her daughters and Ginny’s mother and her three girls is obvious. In Linda, with her sunglasses that hide her face, Ginny feels a kindred spirit. Linda is sensitive yet quiet, easily hurt yet outwardly stoic.

These chapters reveal more about Pete and Ty, two men in similar roles but with distinctly different personalities. In the Monopoly games, Pete is funny, outgoing, and entertaining. He sings songs and tells stories about his youth, surprising Ginny with his boyish vibrance, teasing and charming them all. Ty, on the other hand, is quiet, calm, pensive, transparent, and kind. In their bedroom on Father’s Day, he and Ginny are loving, open, and compassionate. They disagree without rancor. Ty sympathizes with Larry and respects his wisdom and fortitude. Unlike his more volatile brother-in-law, Ty is built for the life he leads: patient, peaceful, and somewhat flat, like the landscape that Ginny sees every day.

In these chapters, Larry is falling into himself, gruff and unhappy, judgmental and flippant, presiding over a painful Father’s Day meal where no one is content and everyone is vulnerable. The kitchen cabinets are a strange symbol of his disdain and jealousy of Harold Clark, his need to one-up his neighbor and prove some point that no one quite understands. Her father’s audacity infuriates Rose, whose overreaction concerns Ginny, another clue that the tension is moving toward a breaking point. Larry isn’t really changing. He is becoming more deeply and completely who he has always been: a tyrant, albeit a smart one, and a malcontent, too. Pammy admits that Grandpa scares her, and Ginny recalls that they used to hide from him when they were children (without saying why). Pammy has shared that Rose won’t let them visit him alone or let him into their house when she’s not home. These are all clues, crumbs of truth that readers can pick up as they make their way through this narrative path in the woods.

Caroline is present in spirit but far away in body, reaching into the family circle via phone calls. She makes the case that her sisters did not have to sign the transfer papers. Ginny claims that they didn’t have any choice, but Caroline disagrees. Later, Ty and Ginny disagree about the transfer, too. Ginny thinks it makes no difference to their daily lives, but Ty thinks that it makes a huge difference to Larry and to him and Pete. Ginny’s relationship with her husband is solid and healthy here, their affection and devotion apparent. However, all of it—the conversation with Mary, Caroline’s phone call, Rose’s anger, Pammy’s admissions—contributes to a deeply unsettling sense that moves the narrative forward.

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