LaJuna’s Aunt Sarge cautions Benny that the roof needs to be replaced. She suggests Benny contact Nathan Gossett, the owner of the property. She warns Benny that he is difficult to track down. He spends most of his time fishing shrimp in the Gulf.

The old cemetery adjacent to her rental home intrigues Benny. She imagines each of the dead and the stories they could tell: “I want to understand this reedy, marshy corner of the world that scratches its existence equally from land, and river, and swamp, and sea…I close my eyes and I hear voices. Thousands whispering, all at once. I can’t make out a single one, but I know they’re here. What do they have to say?” (80). She investigates the crumbling, neglected Gossett mansion itself with its unkempt gardens and wild-growth trees. She even peers through the dusty windows of the ground floor library and sees the shelves and shelves of books. She is enchanted. In her difficult and lonely childhood, shuffling home to home between her parents, books had been her refuge, her escape. When other kids picked on her for her social awkwardness, she found consolation in books, feeling that they built her identity (100).