The Past

At the start of the novel, the author uses both Del’s and Rae Lynn’s departures from their familiar lives in order to instigate her explorations concerning the past. Del is compelled to leave his life “on Moe Sutton’s farm down in Clinch County, Georgia,” after sleeping with his boss’s wife and discovering his boss’s desire to kill him (3). Rae Lynn decides to flee her life in Harnett County, North Carolina, after her husband Warren begs her to kill him, and his friend Butch catches her in the act of mercy. For both protagonists, therefore, running to Swallow Hill offers them the chance to escape their pasts. They each convince themselves that the turpentine camp “could be a new start” (294). However, the longer they are at Swallow Hill, the more their pasts threaten to resurface and sabotage their anonymity in the...