Chapter 6 Summary

When True Belle, Violet's grandmother, returned to Vesper County, Virginia to care for her five grandchildren, she had her wages sewed into the hem of her dress. Ten golden eagle dollars, the total earned in twenty-two years of working for Vera Louise Gray, the white woman. The children are living with their mother in an abandoned shack, foraging for okra, dried beans, and berries in the forest. Rose tells people her husband just gave up and left, fed up with the price of coffee and his eldest daughter's twisted legs. She never says anything about him belonging to a party that supported the vote for black people.

True Belle cares for the children for eleven years, long enough to see Rose kill herself. She fills Violet's head with stories of that magical boy, the beautiful golden-skinned, golden-haired child she cared for during all...