Opening
Two lives run on parallel tracks across a century: in 1888–89, Johanna Bonger risks love with Theo van Gogh amid the growing storm around Vincent van Gogh. In the present, Emsley Wilson loses her anchor—her grandmother, Violet Velar—and stumbles into grief, legacy, and a mysterious house of art and secrets. Across both timelines, sunflowers turn toward the light, insisting on hope.
What Happens
Chapter 6: Sunflowers Will Tire of the Sun
In December 1888, Johanna arrives in Paris to “visit” her brother, Andries 'Dries' Bonger, but her true mission is to repair his strained friendship with Theo. She arranges a casual run-in outside Goupil & Cie, where Theo works. Far from the dissolute figure Dries painted, Theo appears vibrant and elegant; he invites her inside, but she declines, and he instead walks her toward the Palais Garnier.
As they stroll, Johanna admits she staged their meeting and voices her worry about Dries. Theo confesses that work and constant vigilance over Vincent, now in Arles, drain him. He lights up describing Vincent’s canvases, then clouds with frustration over his brother’s darkness and aversion to self-promotion. They run into Edgar Degas, who gruffly salutes Theo as “an honorable gentleman,” a public nod to Theo’s integrity that lingers.
Theo’s warmth and devotion contrast starkly with Johanna’s chilly former suitor, Eduard. By the walk’s end, Theo openly renews his feelings and asks to see her again, promising a constancy she isn’t sure she dares to trust. His parting vow—bold, romantic, impossible to ignore—plants a seed: perhaps Theo is not an obligation to be untangled, but a future to be chosen.
Chapter 7: The Next Party
In the present day, Emsley keeps vigil beside Violet’s hospital bed. The staff’s early optimism fades; Emsley tries to coax her back with their “favorites” game and promises to salvage the faltering auction business. Alarms shatter the quiet. Despite swift intervention, Violet dies, and Emsley is left in a hush that feels endless.
A nurse presses a small box into her palm—sunflower earrings Violet ordered for her. Numb, Emsley trudges to the Greenwich Village brownstone and finds a “SOLD” sign planted on the stoop, the cost of care made brutally visible. She confirms with her former friend and business partner, Diya, that she’ll stay to handle the funeral and the house. Calls pile up: the estate attorney, Bram Dekker, schedules a meeting; her mother, Anna Wilson, rattles off logistics.
Inside, the first two floors—once The Gallery Velar—stand stripped and echoing. In Violet’s theatrical bedroom, Emsley breaks under the weight of absence. She lifts the odd, ugly baby painting from Violet’s box of effects, a stand-in for every untold story, and demands the room answer her: What is she supposed to do now?
Chapter 8: An Unacceptable Mésalliance
Two weeks of Paris walks and quiet conversations confirm what Johanna already knows: she loves Theo. On Christmas Eve, by a fire in Dries’s apartment, Theo asks again. Johanna says “Yes,” and their first kiss feels like the threshold to a life she has only read about. Dries and his wife, Annie, respond with cool restraint, their unhappy marriage casting doubt over any romance.
Plans form quickly—until a telegram arrives from Paul Gauguin in Arles: Vincent is grievously ill with a nervous collapse; Theo must come at once. Theo leaves without hesitation. A letter follows: a newspaper clipping lays out the horror—Vincent has cut off his own ear and given it to a young woman named Rachel. Dries declares the madness “in the blood,” calls the match an “unacceptable mésalliance,” and forbids the marriage.
Johanna refuses to surrender. She defends Theo’s tenderness and character, then chases after her brother to fight for her future, asserting a new, braver voice that embodies Female Empowerment and Perseverance.
Chapter 9: New Tracks
The morning after Violet’s death, Emsley starts at the top of the house and opens a studio door onto what looks like a crime scene—blood, weapons, chaos—only to learn it’s an installation by Strena, an artist friend of Violet’s. Emsley breaks the news; Strena leaves in tears. In the basement, Emsley discovers a cavern of wonders and burdens: a taxidermy bear, an old wardrobe, towers of boxes, and—astonishingly—an entire carousel.
As Emsley hauls boxes up the stairs, the estate lawyer arrives—not the elder she imagines, but his grandson, also named Bram Dekker. He wordlessly grabs a box and helps with every last one, then offers practical lifelines: an antiques dealer for the carousel, logistics for appraisals, names she can trust. The kindness steadies her.
In the kitchenette, over a glass of water, Bram names her grief: it feels like riding a train whose track has suddenly ended. When she whispers that she wants the old track back, he doesn’t fix it. He simply sits with it—and suggests she might build new ones. After he leaves, having put several wheels in motion, Emsley feels the quiet again and assumes she won’t see him.
Chapter 10: Gratitude
Despite Dries’s protests, Johanna and Theo marry in Amsterdam on April 17, 1889. After a modest ceremony and a one-day honeymoon in Brussels, they arrive at their Paris apartment under a flood of light. On their wedding night, Johanna trembles with anxiety; Theo meets her with patience and gentleness, deciding not to consummate the marriage yet. Her love crystallizes around his care.
Their fourth-floor home dazzles—walls crowded with Vincent’s canvases: flowering trees, burnished fields, and riotous sunflowers. Theo explains what the flowers mean to his brother: gratitude, faith that does not fail. The symbol fixes itself in Johanna’s mind, a bright north star that also anchors the novel’s meditation on Legacy, Art, and Preservation.
Theo updates her on Vincent; he is considering the asylum at Saint-Rémy. Even with that shadow, the apartment feels like a beginning. In the sunlit rooms, they finally consummate their marriage. Johanna, newly certain and newly vulnerable, hints at what comes next: difficulties lining up like train cars, fast.
Character Development
Both protagonists cross thresholds that redefine them—one by choosing love in defiance of propriety, the other by surviving love’s loss.
-
Johanna
- Moves from cautious observer to decisive partner, choosing Theo against family condemnation.
- Reframes duty as devotion, claiming her voice in arguments with Dries.
- Learns tenderness as strength through Theo’s care on their wedding night.
-
Emsley
- Shifts from career-first detachment to raw mourning, anchoring in action: sorting the house, making calls, showing up.
- Accepts help—from Bram in boxes and in words—without mistaking it for rescue.
- Begins to translate grief into motion, sketching the first “new tracks.”
Themes & Symbols
Family, Love, and Sacrifice: The bond between Theo and Vincent drives decisions that cost sleep, money, and safety. Johanna’s refusal to abandon Theo after the scandal, and Emsley’s fierce caretaking of Violet’s life and legacy, show love not as sentiment but as sustained action.
Finding One’s Purpose and Identity: Johanna claims a new self—as a wife, a partner in art, a woman who chooses her fate. Emsley’s task is excavation: as she empties rooms and opens boxes, she also sifts through memory and possibility, moving from stunned stillness toward purpose.
Sunflowers: Defined explicitly as Vincent’s emblem of gratitude, the flowers come to mean steadiness that turns toward light. In Theo and Johanna’s apartment, they are a daily manifesto: hope is a practice. In Emsley’s present, the sunflower earrings function like a relay baton—passing courage from Violet to her granddaughter.
Key Quotes
“Sunflowers will tire of the sun before I tire of you, Johanna Bonger.”
Theo’s vow reframes romance as endurance. It foreshadows the constancy Johanna will need amid public scandal and private sorrow, and it binds the sunflower symbol to unfailing devotion.
“You feel like you’ve been on a train, going steadily forward on a track, and then the track disappeared.”
Bram gives Emsley a precise image for grief: not only pain, but disorientation. By naming the loss of structure, he legitimizes her inability to simply “bounce back.”
“Build new tracks.”
This spare directive resists empty comfort and offers agency. It becomes a quiet thesis for the modern timeline: grief doesn’t restore the old world; it demands the courage to lay a new one.
“Sunflowers mean gratitude to Vincent. He never loses faith.”
Theo’s explanation cements sunflowers as the novel’s moral center—gratitude sturdy enough to withstand illness, failure, and uncertainty. It links art to survival.
“Unacceptable mésalliance.”
Dries’s condemnation encapsulates the era’s social rigidity. The phrase turns Johanna’s acceptance of Theo into an act of rebellion, sharpening the stakes of her choice.
“I would love him forever for that.”
Johanna’s private vow after Theo’s gentleness on their wedding night reveals the novel’s ethic of care: intimacy grounded in respect becomes the foundation that carries them forward.
“Difficulties came for us, lined up like joined train cars, one following the other. And fast.”
Johanna’s closing image mirrors Bram’s metaphor, stitching the timelines together. Both women brace for impact and choose movement anyway.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters lock in the novel’s emotional architecture. Johanna and Theo’s marriage becomes the ballast against the tempests created by Vincent’s illness, money troubles, and public gossip. The shock of the ear incident introduces the crucible in which their love—and Johanna’s resolve—hardens.
Violet’s death launches Emsley’s quest. The brownstone’s contents—carousel, paintings, boxes—form a literal archive of family and art that she must interpret to reclaim her footing. Meeting Bram adds a humane counterweight to her isolation and frames grief as work that can, with time, become creation.
Together, the timelines echo and amplify: love as labor, grief as motion, art as legacy. The sunflowers—gratitude held to the light—root both stories in a single, steady truth.