Eventually, Clarentine will leave her husband and move to Winnipeg to the home of one of her sons, Barker, taking Daisy with her. Barker is a professor, well-known botanist and research expert on the spring-flowering Lady’s Slipper, but from a more practical standpoint it was his work on improving the Marquist hybrid of hearty spring red wheat that won him acclaim, and a military exemption from World War I.
Cuyler
will provide financial support for his daughter but does not see her. Considered
an expert in stone work, Cuyler is presented as an uneducated bumpkin in
Chapter 1, but he somehow becomes a partner in a limestone mining company in
Bloomington, Indiana, and transforms into a leading Chamber of Commerce type
citizen.
As his
career advances Barker will be advanced to the Agricultural Department of the
Canadian government headquartered in Ottawa. And Daisy will move into her
father’s palatial home in Bloomington and attend college.
As is
expected for the time period, Daisy will marry. On her honeymoon in Paris, her
husband dies in an accident making her an incredibly young widow; until she
takes on her second husband, Barker, her senior by 20-some years.
Got all
that? Like I said, it is complicated.
At this
point, the book becomes less complicated, and more interesting. It takes us
through chapters titled Marriage, Love, Motherhood, Work, Sorrow, Ease, Illness
and Decline, and finally Death.
Daisy
has had two lifelong friends, nicknames Fraida and Beans. Her interactions with
them, primarily through letter writing are priceless, and remind me closely and
favorably of one of my favorite movies: How to Make an American Quilt. If you have
not seen the movie (you should) it is comprised of weekly quilt-making meetings
of old friends and relatives where personal and private trials and tribulations,
loves and hates, are discussed in a manner that only close friends can understand.
These are heartfelt discussions common among women, and nonexistent among men.
The
book never lost my attention, though parts of it irritated me, Chapter 1 in
particular. But read it, do not skip it, it provides too many connecting
details – not the least of which is the “relic” discovered as Daisy’s children
shift through her belongings after her death.