A mob captured him and buried him alive in Miss Mary’s yard beneath a peach tree.
Small children had started to turn up murdered, and Hoyt blamed the deaths on a Black teenager who had brain damage. In a moment of coherence, Miss Mary explained to Patricia that Hoyt had been in business with her father when she was a small child. An intruder appeared on Patricia’s roof and she had to call the police. The next section is dated June of 1993 and is titled “Bridges of Madison County.” Miss Mary continued to scream about James and accused him of being a man named Hoyt. The next day, Patricia went to see James and he explained to her that he had a rare disease that did not allow him to go in the sunlight. Mary started screaming at James and he left. James came to her house the next day and she apologized to him, then invited him to join book club. Horribly ashamed, she ran out of the house and saw his cleaning woman, Francine, go inside. She attempted to give him CPR, but he woke up. When she got to his aunt’s house, Patricia let herself in and found him dead in his bed. Patricia went to see the mysterious nephew of Mrs.
Patricia’s was distraught because she had lost one of her new earrings, but Carter told her it was just costume jewelry he had gotten for free from a patient. Savage died from a rare type of blood poisoning a few days later. Carter came home and took both of them to the hospital. When she got home, she went out to the ally to take the garbage out and was attacked by an elderly neighbor, Mrs. The next section is dated May of 1993 and is titled “Helter Skelter.” Patricia got pearl earrings from Carter for her birthday and showed them off to her friends at book club. She became close friends with Kitty, Grace, Slick, and Maryellen. Patricia was reluctant, but once she started reading true crime, she realized she loved in. The book club broke up and Patricia left to go home, but a woman named Kitty invited her over the next month to read a true crime book with a few of the other women. However, when Marjorie realized that Patricia had not read the book at all, she asked the other women to chime in, and it turned out that none of the women had read the book. Patricia was terrified of making a fool of herself in front of all the other women because she was scheduled to lead a talk on the book. She did not have enough time to read the book of the month because Carter’s mother, Miss Mary, had just moved in with them because of her dementia. She used to be nurse before marrying Carter and having children with him, and she missed the excitement of the hospital. Patricia joined the book club because she was bored at home alone all day. The first book was selected by Marjorie Fretwell, a socialite who was determined to read the great works of literature, hand-selected by her. The novel switches from an omniscient to a close-third on Patricia Campbell, the main character. The section is labeled “November 1988.” All of the sections in the book are titled with the name of the selection the book club is reading in that particular month. Their story, the narrator says, will also end in blood.Īfter the prologue, the definition of the word “housewife” is presented, and then the first section, “Cry The Beloved Country,” begins. The novel begins with an omniscient narrator who tells us that the story begins with the bloody childbirth of five little girls who grow up to be housewives in the wealthy Old Village of South Carolina. Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Hendrix, Grady.