Chapter 6: Span of a Continent Summary

Two weeks after Dr. Byron first arrives at the Turnbow farm, he is living in a camper trailer next to the barn while doing his field research, at Cub's insistence. Ovid has also recruited three of his graduate students to assist, Pete, Mako, and Bonnie, who spend hours on the mountain studying the butterflies. Dellarobia isn't entirely comfortable around these educated people but she joins them in the camper for penny poker and sees ways the students, all near her own age, are both worldlier yet somehow younger than she herself is.

The farm floods under an unseasonable deluge of rain, killing and stunning the butterflies, and leaving Hester's soon-to-be birthing ewes nowhere to graze. Dellarobia can barely get to her porch for a cigarette. She is stunned when Hester arrives unannounced, since her in-laws...