Swift River

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of racism, sexual content, pregnancy loss, and child sexual abuse.

Clara writes to Sweetie, describing her work week and her day off. She works six days a week and is very tired because Doctor has not replaced the other workers who departed during The Leaving. Clara is responsible for doing house chores, going on calls, and running the clinic. On Sundays, Clara returns to her family’s house on Little Delta. When she is back in Swift River, she misses her family and community deeply. She prays for the family and reminisces. It is not safe for her to stay at the house overnight because of the sundown law. She thinks she sees a “gap-toothed black ghost” (137).

In a second letter dated November 21, 1915, Clara writes that the Canadian workers hired to fill the jobs of the town’s former Black residents have arrived; she took what she could from her old house before they moved into the old mill houses. The white residents of Swift River dislike the Canadian workers even more than the Black workers and consider them “dirty.”

Clara gets called to the mill to help a woman who is in premature labor.