Summary

Chapter 4 returns to the more disjointed narrative structure of the beginning, taking the reader from the night August and her family left Tennessee to the prostitute that moves into the apartment below them in Brooklyn. Chapter 4 does not follow a clear linear progression, but instead jumps between the early years of her childhood in both SweetGrove and Brooklyn.

The chapter opens with the night August's father took the children from Tennessee two years after her mother began speaking to Clyde's ghost. Later, Chapter 4 reveals more specific details about their home in SweetGrove. At one time, the farm was a large tract of land with a house in disrepair, but by the time August left it, most of the land had been reclaimed by the government for failure to pay taxes.

Another thread running through Chapter 4 is the reality of their new life in New...