Summary

Mabel – This brief chapter begins with a comment on Mabel’s thoughts about Cora, the comment followed by a description of her life on the Randall plantation (including her passing relationship with Cora’s father) and her sudden decision to leave. Narration describes her journey, her pausing to eat some of the food she took from Ajarry’s garden (“The most valuable land in all of Georgia” 294)), her contemplations of her mother’s strength – and her decision to go back, based on her feeling of hopelessness, and of love for her daughter. She starts to head back, but is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies, laying herself down “onto a bed of soft moss [that] felt right” (295).

The North – This final section begins with another wanted ad: for “a slave girl called Cora … possibly answering to the name Bessie [and] last seen in...