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Summary
Chapters 9-10
Chapter 9
Maren checks in at the Bridewell mental facility, requesting to meet with her father. She is introduced to Dr. Worth, the director of the facility, who is hesitant to allow Maren to see Francis as she feels that it will be upsetting for both. Maren learns that Francis has never had a visitor in the fourteen years that he has been at Bridewell. After making her case, Maren is given a ten-minute window in which to meet Francis, though Dr. Worth warns her that Francis is unlikely to recognize her. She follows a hospital orderly, Travis, to her father’s room, where she meets her father, who has deteriorated mentally and physically in the time he has spent at Bridewell and is missing a hand. Francis is overwhelmed upon seeing Maren and begins to cry, though he cannot speak. Instead, Travis shows Maren a journal that Francis has prepared in the event that his child ever arrives at Bridewell.
From the journal, which is addressed to her, though not by name, she learns a good deal about her father. Adopted by the Yearly family, he had an unhappy childhood. Additionally, he reports that he often felt that he was being followed and watched by a mysterious man. At age 22, he meets Janelle while working as a forest ranger and they fall in love and get married. In the journal, she sees photos of her mother looking far happier than Maren ever saw her. Francis’ journal then acknowledges what Maren has long suspected: that he too is an eater. His earliest memory is of eating a pedophile who attempted to assault him in the restroom of a rest stop, after which he is found by the police and adopted by the Yearlys. Francis is able to hide his condition from Janelle, though one day he eats a man who slanders her, and she arrives home in time to witness his cannibal act. After that point, she stays with him but her love is mixed with fear, and Francis leaves Janelle after recognizing that she is afraid of him. After this point, the handwriting in the journal deteriorates into meaningless repetitions and scribbles.
Travis, who has read the journal, informs Maren that Dr. Worth has called Child Protective Services, and he offers to house her for the night. Before leaving, Maren asks Travis how Francis lost his hand, and Travis simply tells her that she already knows the answer to that question. She leaves the institute and, later, Travis picks up Maren from town and brings her to his house, where he lives alone. She is surprised that Travis is not afraid of her, given that he knows about her cannibalism, and he confesses to her that he is responsible for the incident in which Francis lost his hand. Curious about Francis’ condition, Travis did his own research into “eaters” and even met numerous eaters after inquiring about the topic to a friend who works in a police department. After learning that the cannibalism can pass from parent to child, he informs Francis, who is so distraught to learn that his child might have inherited the condition that he eats his own hand. To Maren’s dismay, Travis then requests that Maren eat him. She denies his request and, horrified, flees his house, but he apologizes and insists on driving her to her destination. She requests that he drive her to Sully’s cabin, and they share an awkward car ride. Once there, he again requests that Maren eat him, and she sends him away. Sully is not home and Maren attempts to make herself comfortable. Looking through a collection of mementos, she spots her father’s forest ranger ID, to her shock and confusion. When Sully arrives home, she pretends that everything is normal but no longer trusts him.
Chapter 10
That night, Maren locks the door before falling asleep in Sully’s cabin. In her dreams, she has tea with Mrs. Harmon, who warns her about Sully and reassures Maren that she is nothing like him. Next, she imagines that she can hear her mother urging her to wake up quickly. When she awakes, Sully is sitting on a chair in her room. She asks him why he has her father’s ID card, and to her shock, Sully claims that he is Francis’ father and her grandfather. Maren is confused, and Sully tells her that Francis’ mother, Maren’s biological grandmother, attempted to flee from Sully with Francis when he was a young child, but lost him to a pedophile. Maren asks what happened to her grandmother and Sully chuckles darkly. Sully continues his story, noting that he attempted to track his son down but, once he was adopted, Francis could not abduct him without attracting attention. Now, Sully concludes, it’s too late for him to reach Francis in the mental institution, so he stalks his own granddaughter, Maren, instead. Maren realizes that Sully intends to kill and eat her, and in the ensuing struggle, she grabs a statuette of a sphinx that Sully took from Mrs. Harmon’s house and strikes him in the head with it. As he cries out in pain and anger, she runs out of the house, leaving her backpack behind.
Running through the woods, she encounters Travis’ car in the middle of the road. The engine is running but Travis is nowhere to be found, and she assumes that Sully has eaten him. Using what she learned from Lee, she drives the car back to Travis’ house and spends the night there, taking some clothes and $700 before leaving. She then drives Travis’ car back to Virginia, hoping to find Lee. Instead, she finds Kayla at her school, and the two agree to get ice cream later. Later, Maren gives Travis’ car to Kayla, who has passed her driving test. Kayla then promises to tell Lee to meet Maren at the Bridewell facility when she next sees him, and Maren thanks her before hitchhiking back up north. After spending several restful weeks in an abandoned farm, Maren waits near Bridewell several days until she sees Lee’s car pull up. Reunited, Maren updates him on the shocking recent events. He asks if she wants to visit her father at Bridewell, and Maren declines.
Analysis
Maren has spent most of the novel hoping to find her father. Despite knowing nothing about him other than his name, she idolizes him, imagining him as a wise and understanding guardian who can bring some stability and security to her life. Her dreams of a peaceful life with her father are quickly dashed when she meets him at the Bridewell Institute. Francis is unable to take care of himself, let alone Maren, and she is finally forced to give up on her hopes of finding a guardian to care for and love her. At Bridewell, she learns about her father and his own fraught relationship with his family. Adopted by the Yearlys, Francis felt that he was an “unsatisfactory replacement” for their deceased biological child, Tom. They frequently berated him for failing to live up to the high expectations set by their late son, and sometimes they even referred to him as “Tom.” Francis sometimes felt haunted by the memory of a brother who he never even knew. In Bones and All, the social institution of the family is not a site of comfort and stability, but rather, the source of difficult inheritances and painful betrayals.
Maren also meets Travis at Bridewell. Though Travis is kind and gentle, Maren feels uncomfortable that he knows so much about her, including the cannibalistic tendencies she shares with her father. She is confused by his ambiguous feelings for her father, and by his mysterious interest in her. At his house, she learns that he is fascinated by eaters even though he is not an eater himself. After learning about Francis’ condition, he begins to personally investigate cannibalism. From a friend who works as a police officer, Travis learns that the police are aware that there are many eaters operating in the country. Often, they assume that eaters are responsible in cases where individuals go missing, though they cannot prove anything. Travis even believes that some police officers are eaters themselves. After obtaining a list of eaters, Travis finds and interviews several of them, learning that the trait can be inherited from a parent like a genetic condition.
Maren is unable to understand his interest in eaters, nor his apparent lack of fear in being eaten. To her surprise, however, she learns that Travis actually desires to be eaten, either due to suicidal tendencies or something akin to a sexual fetish. Travis has in fact been turned down by several eaters, and he begs a horrified Maren to eat him. Travis is one of the most complex and ambiguous characters in the novel. Though he treats Maren with kindness, she is disgusted by his request to be eaten and desires to get away from him as quickly as possible. In explaining himself, he emphasizes his loneliness, noting that his only companion was his mother and that he was entirely alone after her death. Though Maren has also experienced loneliness and alienation, she attributes these experiences to her status as an eater and cannot understand why a “normal” person would have such a hard time forming bonds with others. Travis, then, represents a more ordinary form of isolation, one that has nothing to do with cannibalism, but which nevertheless defines his life. For Travis, then, to be eaten implies a strong interpersonal bond with the eater, and he longs for the intimacy of being consumed. For him, his rejection by several eaters is akin to a romantic rejection. Though he suggests to Maren that he is not interested sexually in women, he nevertheless insists that he is willing to do, say, or be whatever he needs to in order to make himself an appealing victim.
Though his death is not depicted directly, Maren assumes that he was eaten by Sully, fulfilling his wish. The shocking discovery of her father’s ID card in Sully’s cabin further develops the novel’s exploration of the difficult complexities of family. Throughout the novel, Sully has exhibited a perhaps-supernatural ability to track down Maren, an ability that is seemingly tied to their familial relationship. He finally confesses that he is Francis’ father and therefore her grandfather, a shocking twist that Maren struggles to understand. There is a strong sense of irony in this revelation – after all, Maren has spent most of the novel attempting to find her family, but she unknowingly encountered her own grandfather at an early point in the story. Further, this twist casts previous events in the novel in a new light. Sully did not just happen to spot Maren on the bus in Pennsylvania, but rather, was actively searching for her there. As Lee correctly predicted, it was no coincidence that Sully found her again at the carnival, and further, it can be assumed that Sully was the man who Francis describes in his journal as a watchful presence following him throughout his childhood. Though he never explains his motivations to her, Maren intuits that his desire to eat her, a goal to which he has expended considerable time and resources, stems from their familial relation. As she fights for her life in his cabin, she recalls him telling her about various native peoples in the South Pacific who, he claims, eat their deceased relatives as form of cultural ritual.
