In a local store, Lucy meets an accomplished writer named Sarah Payne, whose books Lucy has read. Lucy forms a deep friendship with a neighbor named Jeremy, a psychoanalyst who encourages Lucy to call herself an artist and advises her to be ruthless. Lucy publishes two stories in small literary magazines. They have two daughters named Chrissie and Becka. Lucy later learns her father killed two innocent German boys during the war and is consumed by his guilt.Įstranged from her family, Lucy moves to New York City to begin a new life with William. Lucy’s father rejects William because of his German lineage. Lucy and William travel to Amgash to introduce William to her family and announce their plans to marry and move to New York City. In college, Lucy meets William, the son of a German man. She aspires to be a writer from a young age and, eventually, earns a full scholarship to a college outside of Chicago. In Chapter 4, Lucy remembers how she would escape the brutal cold of her family’s one-room garage home by staying longer at school and reading.

Lucy’s mother tells her the story of Kathie Nicely, a wealthy friend who left her husband and children for another man only to be abandoned by her lover. Lucy recalls the harsh poverty that isolated her family and the abuse she and her siblings faced because of their father’s untreated post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in World War II. Lucy’s mother attempts to entertain Lucy with gossip from their hometown. Lucy and her mother struggle to reconnect as they avoid discussing the abuse and trauma Lucy experienced as a child. William has called Lucy’s mother and asked her to help. Isolated from her daughters and husband William, Lucy reunites with her estranged mother, who flies in from rural Amgash, Illinois, to care for Lucy. Lucy Barton, a writer and mother, recovers from complications from her appendix surgery in a 1980s New York City hospital with a view of the Chrysler Building.

Lucy strout