Summary: Chapter 28
Mary Willis tells Will how everybody found out about Miss
Love’s arrangement with Rucker: while Will was away camping, Miss Love
went into Rucker’s store, where a customer greeted her as Mrs. Blakeslee.
Miss Love politely corrected the customer, telling him that she
intended to keep her name. This announcement shocked a customer
named Mrs. Predmore, who told Miss Love and Rucker that she disapproved
of their behavior. Miss Love was outraged by Mrs. Predmore’s presumptuousness
and announced to the whole store that she and Rucker were married
in name only and slept in separate beds. The gossips of Cold Sassy
think this arrangement suggests that Miss Love is only after Rucker’s
money. Mary Willis tells Will that she is beginning to hate Miss
Love.
Summary: Chapter 29
Loma and her husband, Camp, visit Miss Love in an effort
to get Mattie Lou’s piano. Miss Love informs them that the piano
belongs to her now. She points out that she knows how to play, whereas Loma
does not. She does allow Loma to take one of Mattie Lou’s mirrors,
a large piece with a picture of Saint Cecilia painted on it. Everyone
in Cold Sassy has something with Saint Cecilia painted on it. Will
says Miss Love has declared war on the family by laying claim to
everything in the house.
Summary: Chapter 30
Will goes to Rucker’s house to help Miss Love train her
horse, Mr. Beautiful. Will and Miss Love discuss Queenie, the Tweedys’
black cook. Will laughs at the fact that Queenie drinks out of mason
jars and eats her food off of old trays. Miss Love tells him that
Queenie does so only because her white employers do not want her
eating from the same dishes they do, but Will insists that Queenie
eats that way by choice. Miss Love’s accusations anger Will. He
thinks she does not understand life in Georgia, since she is practically
a Yankee.
Will finds out that Rucker knows about the kiss between
Miss Love and Clayton McAllister. Rucker has two free tickets to
New York, and Miss Love asks if Will’s parents will be using them. Rucker
had planned to send Will’s parents to New York to do shopping for
the store, but Mary Willis is still mourning her mother and refuses
to go. Will assures Miss Love that his mother will not change her
mind. Before Will leaves the house, Miss Love thanks him for being
her friend.
Summary: Chapter 31
Elated by his closeness to Miss Love, Will goes to Loma’s
house to apologize for the stories he told his friends about her.
He arrives to find Loma furious with Camp. It embarrasses Will to
see how Camp lets Loma treat him. To Will’s shock, Loma is amused
by the stories he told. They share a laugh and enjoy each other’s
company for the whole afternoon. Loma gives Will a journal and encourages
Will to write in it every day. Loma herself briefly attended
college and once loved the theater, but she no longer has time to
write and urges Will to become a writer in her place. Will does
not want Loma to plan his life. He wants to be a farmer, even though
Rucker expects him to take over the store. Still, Will appreciates
Loma’s confidence in him and leaves feeling perplexed that he and
Loma have gotten along so well.
Analysis: Chapters 28–31
When Miss Love condemns the racism of the some Southern
customs, Will initially blames ignorance and Northern snobbishness, but
her point of view eventually makes him think about the small racist
gestures that are so common as to go unnoticed. Until Miss Love
points out the racism of white employers, Will naïvely assumes that
Queenie eats from old dishes and trays because she wants to. He
is so used to Rucker doing as he pleases and breaking social conventions
that he forgets that not everyone in Cold Sassy has the same freedom.
Will initially finds Miss Love’s opinions peculiar and even arrogant
because they are so unfamiliar. By reacting harshly to her views
and judging them as ignorant Northern thinking, Will shows that
he has partially adopted the close-minded attitudes of his neighbors.
Miss Love sets off a series of awakenings in Will. Her sexuality excites
his sexual maturation, her marriage to Rucker causes him to question
God and society, and her Yankee opinions about life in the South
awaken him to the prejudices inherent in his culture.
