Opening
Chapters 6–10 rip the Foss children from riverbound safety and thrust them into a predatory system, even as the present-day Staffords circle a buried family secret. Past and present tighten together: Rill Foss (May Crandall) fights to keep her siblings safe inside Georgia Tann’s machine, while Avery Stafford follows her grandmother Judy Stafford (Fern Foss)’s fractured memories toward “Arcadia”—a word that promises both paradise and peril.
What Happens
Chapter 6: The Taking
Rill’s dream of the Arcadia’s quiet river life shatters when Zede arrives with the news that Queenie Foss’s twins have died. With Briny Foss at the hospital, Zede leaves a runaway teen, Silas, to watch the five Foss children. Rill and Silas circle one another—wary at first, then warming over food and stories—until Silas’s scarred back silences a scoffing Camellia Foss. The fragile peace breaks when Silas spots men coming.
Policemen board the shantyboat, insisting the children’s parents sent for them. Silas lies, the lead officer menaces, and Rill steps forward to protect Silas, choking back fear under the officer’s leering gaze. Camellia bolts—dropping through the outhouse into the river—but is dragged back, soaked and screaming. The officers herd all five children into a motorboat and deliver them to a Memphis lot, where Miss Tann (Georgia Tann) appraises them like goods, cooing over “precious blonds” and dismissing Camellia. Jammed into a car with two terrified children, Rill understands—they are not going to their parents.
Chapter 7: Whispers of Arcadia
In the present, Avery visits her grandmother at Magnolia Manor. Judy drifts in and out of clarity, then locks onto a photograph from May’s room; her eyes flood as she whispers “Queenie.” Panic overtakes her—she grabs Avery’s phone and hisses that no one can know about Arcadia.
An attendant interrupts, and the thread snaps. Judy’s face smooths into blankness—then she startles Avery by calling her “Rill” and warning that “ears are everywhere.” Avery leaves without answers, only the sense that her family keeps a secret large enough to fracture memory and threaten reputation.
Chapter 8: The House on the Hill
The Foss children reach a pristine white mansion—the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Miss Tann hands them to the rigid Mrs. Murphy; together they discuss “retraining,” price, and marketable traits as if the children are inventory. In a bureaucratic severing, Mrs. Murphy erases Rill’s name and replaces it with “May Weathers,” renaming the others too—an efficient way to cut ties to home.
Rill overhears Miss Tann mention “surrender papers” signed at the hospital, confirming the children have been paper-stolen. They sit for hours in a hallway of hollow-eyed kids, ignored unless scolded. When Fern has an accident, a worker snaps at her. The night ends with humiliation: a back room, orders to strip, and a grim assembly-line bath in the same murky water.
Chapter 9: The House on Lagniappe Street
Avery raises May Crandall and the word “Arcadia” with her parents; both deny knowing anything. After a political event, she detours to Judy’s now-empty house on Lagniappe Street. The rooms feel airless, paused mid-breath. In a stack of appointment books, she finds a recent entry: “Trent Turner, Edisto,” plus a number.
She reaches Trent Turner Jr., a real estate agent who turns guarded when she mentions Judy. He reveals his late grandfather kept “papers” for Judy in an envelope—but he refuses to hand them over unless Judy comes to Edisto in person. When Avery explains Judy can’t travel, the call ends. Another door closes; the urgency spikes.
Chapter 10: The Peppermint Man
Rill and her siblings wake in a dank basement room. In the night, someone left peppermint candies on their pillows. Camellia insists the giver is a friend. When Mrs. Pulnik notices their unlocked door, the children lie to protect the mystery man. Downstairs, they glimpse him: the maintenance worker Mr. Riggs, who winks at Camellia.
After a thin bowl of cornmeal mush, the children are sent into a fenced yard that hums like a prison yard—cliques, watchers, threats. Stevie, one of the car-ride children, is alone; his sister has vanished. A redheaded bully blocks Rill’s group until she bribes him with the peppermints. As he lets them pass, he leans in with a razor whisper: don’t let Riggs get you alone. The sweets curdle into warning; danger lives inside the home’s walls.
Character Development
The chapters fracture childhood and force quick transformations, revealing who resists, who adapts, and who breaks under pressure.
- Rill Foss (May Crandall): Steps into command, trading innocence for strategy—appeasing adults when necessary, shielding siblings, and reading danger fast.
- Avery Stafford: Shifts from polished political heir to determined investigator, prioritizing truth over optics as clues point inward at her own family.
- Camellia Foss: Fights first, doubts second. Her defiance—outhouse escape, skepticism turned fear—exposes the courage and vulnerability of a child refusing to be remade.
- Judy Stafford (Fern Foss): Flickers of lucidity reveal names and places that solder timelines together, while paranoia exposes the cost of decades of buried trauma.
- Georgia Tann: Emerges as a velvet-gloved trafficker—polite, efficient, and merciless—who turns institutions into engines for profit.
Themes & Symbols
The story anchors itself in The Enduring Power of Family Bonds: Rill’s promise to her mother becomes a mission to keep the siblings together, even as names and homes are stripped away. Family is the one identity they are told to forget and the one they refuse to relinquish.
Systemic abuse drives Corruption of Power and Exploitation of the Vulnerable. Police, paperwork, and philanthropy merge to launder kidnappings into “surrenders,” with children priced by hair and eye color. The mansion’s immaculate facade hides a market that preys on the poor.
The present timeline traces Secrets and Their Consequences: Judy’s mind splinters around what she can’t bear to say, and Avery learns that silence corrodes from within. Her pursuit becomes The Search for Identity and Truth, as family mythology collides with evidence—photos, ledgers, and a sealed envelope in Edisto.
Symbols sharpen the stakes:
- The Arcadia: The shantyboat is a handmade paradise—freedom, river rhythm, and family sovereignty. Being torn from it is an expulsion from innocence into captivity.
- Peppermint Candies: A small sweetness that masks predation. Once the warning comes, each candy reads as bait in a place where kindness is transactional or false.
Key Quotes
“We mustn’t let people find out… They can never know about Arcadia.” Judy’s plea yokes love to fear. “Arcadia” becomes a codeword for a past so dangerous it can’t be said aloud, propelling Avery toward the family fault line.
“Rill… Ears are everywhere.” By naming Avery as someone else—and warning of listeners—Judy collapses time. The past’s surveillance echoes the orphanage’s constant monitoring, underscoring how secrecy polices behavior across generations.
“Precious blonds.” Miss Tann’s offhand appraisal condenses the commodification at the heart of the scheme: children as inventory, beauty as price point, humanity erased by marketing language.
“Don’t let Riggs get you off by yourself. He ain’t the kind of friend you want.” This whispered caution flips the peppermint “gift” into a red flag. It foreshadows layered threats in the home—harm from staff and danger embedded in the child hierarchy.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters stage the novel’s hinge. In the past, the taking of the Foss children detonates the plot and exposes the machine that will grind them down—names changed, bodies controlled, bonds tested. In the present, Judy’s fractured revelations give Avery her first coordinates: Queenie, Arcadia, and Edisto. The dual timelines now move in lockstep—each clue Avery uncovers lands with the weight of what we’ve just witnessed with Rill—tightening suspense and deepening moral urgency.