Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis

It is 1918 at this chapter's opening and World War I ends. Mrs. Ten Boom suffers from a cerebral hemorrhage, which leaves her in a coma for two months. The family can only watch and pray. She wakens from her coma, but cannot speak. When Nollie marries, the girls' spinster aunt, Anna, must give Nollie the ritual thirty-minute talk about sex. Betsie, barren from her long-term illness, decides not to seek marriage. At twenty-seven, Corrie also remains happily single. At Nollie's wedding, her mother sings one hymn aloud. Four weeks later, she dies.

Betsie also takes ill. Because of Betsie's illness, Corrie must take over the bookkeeping for the shop. She discovers that she enjoys the work very much. When she confesses this fact to Betsie, Betsie confesses that she enjoys running the household, which she does with a mastery missing since...