Chapters 3 and 4 Summary

These chapters introduce Gertie's family and core relationships.

Chapter 3 - Gertie reads to her children from the Bible, in an attempt to help them move on from their grief over Henley. Clytie weeps as she studies a gift Henley gave her, while Reuben reacts to Gertie's reading with sullen anger. Enoch is restless with his lack of understanding of anything other than the fact that Henley is gone, while Amos is too young to understand even that. In the middle of the reading and the grieving Cassie laughs and plays, paying no attention to her mother as she sits on the block of cherry wood Gertie referred to earlier.

As the reading finishes, Clovis impatiently tells Gertie and the children to get ready to go visiting: he and the children to his parents and Gertie to her mother's. Clytie complains about...