Opening
Two timelines tighten around the same haunted ground. In 1987, Benedetta "Benny" Silva chases a lifeline for her students and stumbles on a forgotten library that could change everything. In 1875, Hannie Gossett risks her life on the river to save two girls—and to keep alive the thread of her own scattered family.
What Happens
Chapter 6: A Literary Treasure Trove
Benny meets LaJuna Carter’s aunt, the formidable “Aunt Sarge,” who agrees to repair Benny’s leaking roof and bluntly labels her an out-of-towner. Sarge reveals the landlord is Nathan Gossett, grandson of the late judge, and that the family plantation, Goswood Grove, sits just across the field. The proximity—and Sarge’s wary, no-nonsense presence—pushes Benny to think about how outsiders and locals collide in Augustine.
Benny follows the old farm levee lane Sarge points out and feels the road’s history humming under her feet. The walk crystallizes her plan: collect the unwritten, local stories that can anchor her class to their past and to one another, a living expression of The Power of Stories and History. An alligator blocks her path until a small boy, Tobias, bravely shoos it away. After escorting him home, Benny reaches Goswood Grove. Through dusty panes she glimpses a vast, floor-to-ceiling library—her “literary treasure trove,” the resource she needs to transform her classroom.
Chapter 7: The Genesee Star
The scene shifts to 1875. Hannie wakes cramped in a barrel and overhears the “Lieutenant” and Moses plot to steal horses and carriage and “get rid of” the driver boy—her. A ruckus from the team distracts them long enough for her to slip away. Before fleeing, she snatches Lavinia Gossett’s reticule, finding money, cornbread, and a pearl-handled pistol.
Memory wrestles with duty. Hannie almost runs home, haunted by the night she didn’t run with her sister Epheme, who was sold away. The pull of blood—and The Search for Family and Identity—drives her back toward danger. At the river she spots Lavinia’s gold locket fallen from a trunk being loaded onto the steamboat Genesee Star. Hearing a faint whimper from inside the cargo, she realizes Lavinia and Juneau Jane LaPlanche are packed into the trunks like freight.
Chapter 8: Pooperoos and Binoculars
In 1987, Benny can’t stop thinking about the library. School grinds on: another new teacher quits; LaJuna misses a full week. Benny borrows binoculars from the football coach to scout titles from her window. Granny T from the Cluck and Oink barges into class with a box of “pooperoos”—banana oatmeal raisin cookies—and scolds Benny for bringing store-bought snacks. She leaves a recipe but dodges the invitation to speak to students, guarding her stories.
Aunt Sarge finishes the roof and mentions she shook down Nathan at the farmers market to pay for the repairs, handing Benny a lead. Sarge explains LaJuna likely stays home to care for younger siblings while her mother works a low-wage job at Gossett Industries. The talk turns tense as Sarge reads Benny’s privilege against Augustine’s reality, pressing the theme of Injustice, Race, and Social Hierarchy. Benny, stung but resolute, heads to Goswood Grove with binoculars to draft a “shopping list” of books for her kids.
Chapter 9: Overboard
Hannie hides among massive cotton bales aboard the Genesee Star and meets Gus McKlatchy, a scrappy white boy stowaway bound for Texas. They strike a wary truce. Hannie shares just enough of her story to enlist his help, promising a dollar and spooking him with talk of witch-haints so he’ll sneak to the passenger deck. He returns with nothing—no trunks, no girls.
Hannie pivots to hope. She asks Gus to listen for Black families named Gossett or Loach as he travels and to watch for three blue beads, her family’s sign. When the boat stops to take on wood, the cotton shifts and exposes them. Mistaken for a deckhand, Hannie is forced to haul firewood. She glimpses Lavinia’s and Juneau Jane’s horses led ashore and considers jumping. Moses seizes her, asks if she can swim, and hurls her into the river.
Chapter 10: The Key
Benny tracks down Nathan at the Thursday farmers market. He looks like a working man, not an heir. She tumbles into a passionate pitch about her students and the books at Goswood Grove. Nathan flinches at the house’s mention, then drops worse news: her rental is being sold to the cemetery; she must be out by Christmas.
Benny presses about the library anyway. Tired and eager to sever the past, Nathan slides a brass key off his ring. Take what you can use, he says. I don’t want any of it. Benny carries the key through the school day like a talisman and, after the final bell, unlocks a side door at Goswood Grove. Inside, time stalls in portraits, dust, and antique hush. The library—wall-to-wall shelves, a sanctuary—steals her breath. Only slowly does she sense another presence in the house.
Key Events
- Benny meets Aunt Sarge, learns about Nathan Gossett and Goswood Grove, and finds the mansion’s hidden library.
- Hannie escapes discovery, recovers Lavinia’s pistol and locket, and realizes Lavinia and Juneau Jane are trapped in trunks aboard the Genesee Star.
- Benny navigates school crises, hears hard truths from Sarge, and scopes the library with binoculars.
- Hannie stows away, allies with Gus, spreads word of her family sign—the three blue beads—and is thrown overboard by Moses.
- Benny confronts Nathan; he gives her the key to the library but reveals she must move out by Christmas.
- Benny enters Goswood Grove and realizes she isn’t alone.
Character Development
Across these chapters, characters choose action over fear, revealing what they’ll risk for truth, family, and future.
- Benny Silva: Shifts from overwhelmed newcomer to strategic problem-solver. She builds local alliances, seeks resources, and refuses to accept the school’s limits, even as housing insecurity looms.
- Hannie Gossett: Moves from survival to rescue, driven by past regret and a living hope of reunion. She risks river, lawmen, and white terror to save the girls and keep searching for kin.
- Nathan Gossett: Rejects his inheritance. His discomfort hardens into a desire to cut ties with Goswood Grove, turning the key—and the moral burden—over to Benny.
- Aunt Sarge: Serves as realist and protector. She secures roof money, names the town’s inequities, and challenges Benny’s assumptions while quietly enabling her mission.
- Gus McKlatchy: A hungry opportunist with a thin seam of compassion. He helps Hannie and takes her family’s sign into the world, becoming a carrier of her story.
Themes & Symbols
Both timelines braid personal rescue with historical recovery. Benny seeks stories to save students; Hannie seeks girls to honor family and right a past failure. In Augustine, knowledge and kinship are survival tools.
The library stands for the transformative force of history—stories that dignify the living and resurrect the silenced. The key becomes access: to resources for Benny’s students, to buried truths Nathan won’t face, and to a legacy demanding accountability. Goswood Grove itself embodies inherited power and neglect: a decaying monument that Benny approaches as a resource and Nathan rejects as a curse.
- Symbols:
- The Library: Knowledge as refuge and fuel; a community’s lost inheritance waiting to be reactivated.
- The Key: Permission and responsibility wrapped together; a handoff of the Gossett legacy.
- Three Blue Beads: A portable family archive—identity condensed into a sign that travels when people cannot.
- The River: Peril and passage—the route of commerce, flight, and fate.
Key Quotes
“A literary treasure trove.”
- Benny’s phrase reframes the abandoned library from relic to living resource. It captures her conviction that books aren’t luxuries but tools that can rewire a classroom—and a town’s future.
“Take any of the books you can use… I don’t care. I don’t want any of it.”
- Nathan’s abdication transfers both access and obligation to Benny. His rejection of heritage exposes the emotional cost of the Gossett past and sets Benny up as its unexpected steward.
They plan to “get rid of” the driver boy.
- The casual phrasing reveals the dehumanizing violence Hannie faces. Misgendered and disposable, she navigates a world where her life is a problem to erase, heightening the stakes of her rescue mission.
“Pooperoos.”
- Granny T’s joking name for her cookies carries cultural heft: humor, care, and community standards that resist institutional neglect. She won’t speak in class, but her recipe is a story in code.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters ignite both plotlines. Benny’s key is the modern inciting incident, granting entry to the material archive that can transform her classroom and expose the Gossett legacy. Hannie’s leap onto the Genesee Star converts memory into action, binding her personal quest to a public rescue.
Together, the cliffhangers—Hannie hurled into the river; Benny sensing an unseen presence—stress how past and present converge at Goswood Grove. The house is not just a setting but a conduit: what one era hides, the other must uncover.