Summary

Chapter 31. In “The LeFarbre Family”, the narrative focuses on the story of Mary Agnes LeFarbre, a Creole schoolteacher who comes to the Samson Plantation. The grandchild of an octoroon, or person who is one-eighth black, and a white man, Mary Agnes’s features barely hint at her mixed heritage. Her family owned slaves, and she sets about working on the plantation as her way of correcting her family’s shameful past, an act for which she has been disowned. Upon visiting his daughter Mary Agnes, her father slaps her for the betrayal of her Creole family’s strict values about not associating with darker blacks. Jane recounts one episode in which blacks were almost hanged for trying to crash a Creole party.

Chapter 32. In “A Flower in Winter”, Tee Bob returns to the plantation from college in Baton...