Judy Stafford (Fern Foss)

Quick Facts

• Role: Elderly matriarch and living bridge between timelines; stolen-child survivor whose buried past drives the plot. Grandmother to Avery Stafford and mother to Senator Wells Stafford.
• First appearance: Present day as “Grandma Judy” in a care facility; historically as Fern on the shantyboat Arcadia.
• Also known as: Fern Foss (childhood), “Beth” (with the Seviers), Judy Myers (young adult), Judy Stafford.
• Family: Second-youngest of the five Foss children; daughter of Queenie and Briny. Childhood features—golden curls and bright eyes—echo her mother, Queenie Foss.
• Appearance notes: The source of the family’s signature “Grandma Judy curls,” a trait visible in Avery and niece Courtney; remembered as “nearly four” in 1939.

Who She Is

Bold public matriarch and hidden child-victim at once, Judy is a palimpsest of identities: the polished society woman overlaid atop the stolen girl, Fern. Dementia turns her memory into an unreliable archive—recent years blur while older traumas sharpen—so that fragments of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, run by Georgia Tann, leak into the present. Through Judy, the novel entwines private memory with public history, pressing the themes of The Search for Identity and Truth and Secrets and Their Consequences: the self can be renamed and relocated, but what is stolen cries out to be restored.

Personality & Traits

Judy’s characterization splits across time. As Fern, she is a playful, dependent preschooler whose trust and love tether the siblings together. As Judy, the sweetness endures beneath confusion; flashes of lucidity reveal a fiercely protective intelligence that has learned the cost of exposure.

• Confused yet tender: Dementia leaves Judy disoriented, but her warmth persists; Avery mourns the loss of the “quick-witted, fun-loving” grandmother even as she still recognizes the gentleness beneath the fog.
• Lucid and protective: In brief, sharp moments, Judy issues urgent warnings—“They can never know about Arcadia”—suggesting an adult’s strategic instinct to guard the fragile life built atop a stolen childhood.
• Formerly spunky, socially bold: Known for a streak “bordering on impropriety,” she spoke out before it was fashionable, implying a lifelong resistance to quiet complicity—even if her past forced a public silence.
• Innocent and dependent (as Fern): Nearly four, she relies on her older sister for comfort and interpretation of the world, highlighting the sibling hierarchy that becomes a survival structure.
• Playful and curious: Climbing rails, counting fireflies, and pointing with a “stubby finger” ground Fern in concrete, childlike joy—details that sharpen the cruelty of her abduction.
• Resilient and bonding: Her inconsolable cries compel her adoptive parents to bring Rill (renamed May) into the home as well; Fern’s need becomes a lifeline that keeps the sisters together.

Character Journey

Judy’s arc is a revelation rather than a transformation. The girl Fern is torn from the Arcadia, renamed “Beth” in the Sevier household, and later refashions herself as Judy Myers before becoming Judy Stafford. Each new name overlays, but never erases, the original self. In old age, her mind erodes the later layers first: stray syllables—“Arcadia,” “Queenie,” “Rill”—rise like artifacts in a low tide. Avery follows these breadcrumbs back through institutional violence and altered records to the lost Foss identity. The culmination is not Judy’s change but her recognition: when she and her sister are reunited, Judy’s fractured timelines braid together. Her past and present speak in one voice, proving that memory, though obscured, is tenacious—and that buried truths, once faced, can heal across generations.

Key Relationships

• Rill Foss (May Crandall): Rill is Fern’s fierce guardian and compass, the child who parented other children. As adults, the sisters’ reunion makes visible the book’s thesis about The Enduring Power of Family Bonds: identity may be renamed, but kinship inscribes itself deeper than paperwork. Judy’s instant recognition of May collapses decades of separation into an unbroken line of belonging.

• Avery Stafford: Avery becomes the investigator Judy cannot be. Judy’s fragmented cues—names like “Queenie” and “Rill,” the hush around “Arcadia”—are the keys Avery uses to unlock a history that polite society would prefer to leave closed. Their physical resemblance literalizes inheritance: Avery carries what Judy almost lost.

• Queenie and Briny Foss: Though Judy cannot fully retrieve them, her body knows. A photograph elicits “Queenie,” surfacing the pre-verbal tether between mother and child. The severance was legal on paper but never complete in the heart.

• Wells Stafford: As a son and senator, Wells balances compassion with caution, managing his mother’s care while guarding a public image. Judy’s illness forces him into a protective posture that mirrors hers—each shielding the family from different kinds of exposure.

Defining Moments

Moments in Judy/Fern’s life are small on the surface but seismic in consequence, each one shifting identity, allegiance, and memory.

• The night on the Arcadia: Watching Queenie depart in a storm for the hospital inaugurates the family’s unmooring. Why it matters: Fern’s first experience of separation foreshadows the state-sanctioned rupture to come.
• The abduction: Police remove the Foss children and deliver them to Tann’s institution, beginning the systematic erasure of their names. Why it matters: This is the original wound that Judy’s later silence tries—and fails—to contain.
• Becoming “Beth” with the Seviers: Adoption forces Fern into a new role and vocabulary. Why it matters: The renaming both protects and obscures her; survival requires acquiescence to a false identity.
• Lucid warnings in the present: “They can never know about Arcadia,” and whispering “Be careful, Rill.” Why it matters: Judy’s mind prioritizes danger and kin, compressing decades of vigilance into a few urgent syllables.
• The reunion: Judy recognizes May instantly; their dialogue slips easily between eras. Why it matters: Recognition reknits identity—Judy and Fern coexist, and truth, at last spoken, becomes restorative rather than ruinous.

Essential Quotes

“My once quick-witted, fun-loving Grandma Judy is now a ghost of her former self. As painful as that is, Daddy can’t talk to anyone about it.”

Avery’s observation captures Judy’s double erasure: dementia diminishes the present self even as social propriety silences the family. The secrecy around illness mirrors the secrecy around Judy’s stolen past.

“We mustn’t let people find out….” She glances toward the door, leans close, then adds in a whisper, “They can never know about Arcadia.”

This is the voice of a survivor whose safety depended on silence. The door-glance and whisper show learned vigilance; “Arcadia” surfaces as both a memory and a risk.

Grandma Judy whispers, “Be careful, Rill.”

Even in confusion, Judy directs care toward the sister who once protected her. The line collapses roles—child comforts guardian—and proves that protective love outlasts chronology.

“Oh, oh…May!” she says as naturally as if they had just seen one another yesterday.

Recognition erupts without hesitation, bypassing lost decades. The spontaneity validates Avery’s investigation and reframes Judy’s “forgetting” as selective: the essential endures.

“You know I’ll always come. On Thursdays. Sisters’ Day.” … “Where is Fern this afternoon?”

The ritual of “Sisters’ Day” asserts continuity; the question about Fern reveals layered identity, as if Judy and Fern are distinct yet concurrent. The line dramatizes how reunion allows both versions of self to be acknowledged and held.