Chapter 6, Finding the Southern Cross Summary and Analysis

The grief Conway felt after Bob's death was soul shattering; she lost her ability to have ordinary emotional responses. She stopped playing the piano altogether and became lost in her studies. Conway and Barry did what they could to get their mother out of the house. She was always more devastated than they were and now expected that their own lives would end by accidental death.

Conway's mother's only distraction was her membership in a small society for psychic research which had many different breeds of eccentric. Women dominated the meetings and while most were very intelligent, they claimed great knowledge about dubious topics. Conway's education had made her too skeptical. The group, in her view, catered to her mother's worst fears and started to take advantage of her financially. Luckily, one of...