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Book Four

Chapters 29–31

Summary: Chapter 29

Ginny recalls her mother Ann and Ann’s devotion to her husband, family, and house, as well as her intolerance of damaging anything in it. Ginny recalls her mother’s closet, full of shoes, dresses, and corsages, a history of high school and one year of college. Rose and Ginny would play in this closet as children. They have allowed Jess to stay in Larry’s house until things with Harold blow over, so Ginny goes there to look around in Larry’s absence, hoping to find some scent of her mother as solace or insight. She looks at boxes of magazines and newspapers in the attic and Larry’s clothes in the closets and drawers. Ginny recalls that some weeks after her mother died, the Lutheran ladies cleared the house of her items. She decides to put Jess in her old bedroom. Ginny finds a box of sanitary napkins and a belt in a linen closet, a remnant of her youth. She makes the bed. As she lays on the clean sheets, she remembers her father having sex with her in that bed. Ginny cries and feels faint, blasted by the past, and lies on the floor. She screams, and then, feeling better, she goes home. 

Summary: Chapter 30

Harold decides to run his tractor through the corn and has an accident that sprays anhydrous ammonia into his eyes. There is no water in the nearby water tank, so he is blind. Harold is taken to a hospital in Mason City, but there’s nothing to be done. When Ty tells Ginny the news, he gets angry at her calm demeanor and leaves. Ginny goes to Rose, whose clarity is comforting. Rose thinks that those who do evil should pay and that Harold’s accident is somehow just. Linda comes in with Jess, who has just heard the news. Rose says that Harold set out to humiliate them all and that this accident doesn’t change that. She tells Jess that he’s got to stand up to his father the way his mother never did. Harold comes home, but Rose, Ginny, and Jess don’t go to him to lend support. On July 17, Ken LaSalle shows up with papers to sign. Larry is suing them, with Caroline’s help, to get the farm back. Ken is Larry’s lawyer now. He thinks they’ve mistreated their father. Ginny feels like she’s been slapped.

Summary: Chapter 31

Ginny recalls that when she was in high school, Caroline got a part in a school play. Caroline didn’t think Larry would approve, so Ginny helped her keep rehearsals a secret. Although Caroline was not good in rehearsals, in the performances, she was outstanding. Even so, she did not want Larry to see her onstage. Caroline tried out for another play and then switched to debating but still shunned her father’s presence. She did well in school, especially if there was a bit of performing involved.

In the present, Ginny looks at the legal paperwork. Larry and Caroline invoke a clause that revokes the agreement under conditions of “mismanagement or abuse.” Shaking, Ginny calls Caroline at her office, but Caroline can’t talk about the suit. As they begin to argue, Caroline reveals that she’s spoken to Ty. Ginny tells her younger sister that she and Rose did everything to protect Caroline from their father, an idea that Caroline finds ridiculous just before she hangs up. 

Analysis: Chapters 29–31

These chapters reveal to readers more and more about the characters—their motivations, their fears, and their strengths. In Chapter 30, Ginny refers to Rose’s unyielding focus on a purpose, which reorients both herself and Jess Clark. Rose has a way of being so certain and clear, speaking with quiet conviction and no hesitation, in a low and penetrating voice that makes the people around her feel safer and more secure. Rose’s reassuring effect happens again and again with Ginny. When she feels herself waver, she calls out for Rose. When she’s upstairs in her old house and vividly recalls what happened in her bedroom, she almost faints and ends up on the floor to steady herself. When she does stand, she calls out Rose’s name. Like the two sisters, Jess is shaken by his father’s performance, but instead of being angry like Rose, he feels lost. He doesn’t gather any strength from the ordeal. He feels defeated and foolish.

Marv Carson steps into the role of friend and defender of Larry at the end of Chapter 30. He’s taken sides and voices his stance. Marv can no longer represent Ginny and Rose and their husbands because he represents Larry. They all used to be on the same side, the side of what was good for the farm, but that is no longer the case. What happens to Harold is tragic, but given his actions at the church potluck supper, some readers may think it is deserved. Rose certainly thinks it is.

During Caroline’s phone call with Ginny, Caroline suggests that she knows nothing about the abuse that happened to her sisters at the hands of their father. She chooses to focus on only the surface of things, their outward appearance, and her point of view. Caroline blames Ginny and Rose for allowing Larry to go out into the storm. She blames them for treating the farm as a business, not as something personal that belongs to the whole family. Caroline ignores the fact that it was Larry’s idea to transfer the farm to his daughters. As a final insult, she insinuates that some of the nice things from her childhood are worth talking about someday, suggesting that it wasn’t all support and love.

Readers learn more about Ann Cook, too, through Ginny’s memories sparked when she searches through her old house. Ann was reticent and timid. She wore a clean apron every day. She collected decorative plates that still perch on a rail in the dining room. In Ann’s engagement photo, she appears virtuous. Ginny hopes she might uncover something that’s been hidden for twenty-two years. She does uncover something, but it’s not about her mother. It’s about herself, as the memories of her abuse become suddenly very, very real, and her reaction to them is swift and dramatic.

A surprising turn is the change of heart that happens in Ty. Caroline suggests that she has talked to Ty behind Ginny’s back. When Ty and Ginny talk about Harold’s accident, Ty accuses her of not even caring and asks what has happened to her to make him feel he doesn’t know her anymore. Ginny suspects that he sympathizes with Larry more than with her. A break of spirit has happened between the couple, and it drives Ginny to seek solace in her sister, not her husband. The squeal of Ty’s tires signals an even deeper rift to come.

Mostly, readers learn about Ginny. She is the one who undergoes seismic changes in the middle of the novel as the memories come rushing back. The scream that she emits out of fear of those memories pierces the silence of her empty childhood house. It is the primal scream of an animal let loose from a cage, all mouth and tongue and sound, and afterward, she gets up, brushes herself off, and walks into yet another new life, one where her repressed memories are now fully exposed.

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