Shelterwood

Valerie and Charlie visit Curtis after their hike. The adults talk on the porch while Charlie plays with the puppies in the yard. Curtis and Valerie compare notes on their investigation into the identity of the dead man that they found in the creek. They both agree that his death is likely to be ruled an accident because no one has found any helpful information. 

They move on to discuss Sydney, Braden, and their grandmother, Budgie Blackwell. Curtis had been helping Valerie by asking locals about them. The stories from the locals vary; no one has a clear idea of what happened to Budgie or where she is now. Curtis tells Valerie that the City of Faith healthcare facility went bankrupt and closed a year ago; this news refutes Sydney’s claims that her grandmother is there. 

Curtis is surprised to hear that Sydney’s mother Jade has been in town recently. He thinks that Jade would only return if she were in desperate need of money or a place to hide. Curtis tells Valerie a bit more about Budgie, calling her a “tough old bird” and recounting her well-informed and passionate speeches at local hearings about the national park (202). 

Valerie tells Curtis about her time at Yosemite and describes Joel’s death during a rescue. Curtis is an empathetic audience and reassures her that Charlie will remember Joel because Valerie will tell his story. Later, Valerie seeks out Sydney at Mrs. Wambles’s foster home. She needs to understand why Sydney believes that Budgie is at City of Faith; she hopes that this avenue of investigation will help her to find Budgie’s actual whereabouts. However, when Valerie arrives at the foster home, Sydney is not there. 

Mrs. Wambles claims that Alton Parker picked Sydney up because he had a room ready for her and was “set up to take charge of the kids” (204). She tells Valerie that Sydney and Braden will be living with Alton in the quarters behind his construction business, but for now, he plans to take them to his hunting cabin for the weekend. Valerie is alarmed by this news. 

When she returns home, Charlie rushes off to meet the neighbors’ children. Shortly thereafter, Valerie is surprised to see the visibly upset neighbor marching over, with Charlie rushing behind him. The man has discovered the blasting cap that Charlie picked up on the hike. Both the neighbor and Valerie are alarmed to realize that Charlie unknowingly picked up an explosive device. Valerie also realizes that the presence of the blasting cap means that the rockslide was not a natural occurrence, but was triggered intentionally. Later that night, Sydney shows up unexpectedly at Valerie’s home, asking for help.

Mrs. Grube leaves Talihina to head home. Olive lies to her to reassure Mrs. Grube about her safety. Olive claims to have train tickets to get home. After Mrs. Grube is gone, Olive seeks out the journalist, Mr. Brotherton, and offers firsthand stories about the “elf children” in exchange for food. Mr. Brotherton promises to keep their identities and location a secret, so Olive escorts him to the children’s campsite to interview Amos, Tula, and Nessa. The other children cooperate willingly, but Dewey resists. Dewey claims that the Choctaw children have been “done wrong by” (211), but that he himself is simply a “wandering spirit” who left home because his family had no use for him after the new labor laws ruled that he was too young to work in the mines. 

Once Olive and Mr. Brotherton have left the other children again, Mr. Brotherton speaks passionately about the egregious abuses of Choctaw families and their land rights. He is aghast that children are fending for themselves on the edges of society because wealthy people want access to their families’ land. He is impressed by the eloquence with which Olive speaks about the subject. 

In town, Olive sees Mr. Lockridge’s personal train car at the end of a train pulling into the station. She rushes back to the children’s campsite, eager to get out of town before Mr. Lockridge or one of his employees recognizes her. Olive wants to avoid the main road to reduce the risk of being seen. As they are walking, however, Dewey raises a disagreement, wanting to take the town’s main road so that they can steal some peppermint sticks. Although they are on a side street, their disagreement catches the attention of a local woman who thinks that the other children (who are mostly Choctaw and are very bedraggled) are hassling the better-dressed Olive. She misreads the situation and assumes that Amos is threatening Olive when he seizes the pony’s reins from Dewey. In reality, Amos is trying to de-escalate the situation. Dewey flees in anger, and the other children scatter, but Amos remains in the street and is shot by the woman.

It is four in the morning, and Valerie is desperately trying to decipher fact from fiction in Sydney’s wild story. Sydney wants Valerie to call law enforcement, but not local law enforcement because she fears that any local person will be loyal to Alton Parker and will force her to return to him. Sydney has an injured arm. In the hour since her arrival, she has told Valerie multiple stories about how she got hurt. When Valerie pushes the issue, Sydney insists that all three versions are true. 

Sydney tells Valerie the most robust story about her grandmother, mother, and brother that she has told yet, but Valerie struggles to balance this new story with other things that Sydney has said in the past. Sydney’s current version of events is that her mother, Jade, returned home and has been living with them at grandmother Budgie’s house. Then, one night, Braden snuck out to meet his girlfriend. While Sydney was asleep, Jade left the house with Budgie, leaving a note to explain where they went. Sydney claims that Braden found the note the next morning.

When Valerie asks how Sydney left with Alton Parker, Sydney tells her that Alton picked her up from Mrs. Wambles’s foster home and then injured her arm and locked her in a room when she refused to tell him where Braden was. Sydney is worried that Alton Parker will decipher her notes and maps in her journal and thus be able to find Braden. According to Sydney, Braden is hiding in the national park because he suspects that Alton had something to do with Budgie’s disappearance. The story also connects to the cave where the remains of the three children were found; Sydney believes that Alton must have hired someone to clear out the bones and other objects that had been buried in the cave; she suspects that he then tried to frame Braden for it. 

Valerie wants to help Sydney but isn’t sure how to do so when she cannot tell fact from fiction in Sydney’s story. The girl’s story feels like a “political grenade” to Valerie because it potentially involves the national park, a dead body, a disturbed Indigenous burial site, and other sensitive details. Unsure of what to do, Valerie calls Curtis for help. Curtis wants to report Sydney’s whereabouts right away, claiming that Mrs. Wambles has reported her missing. Valerie, who spoke to Mrs. Wambles after Alton Parker picked Sydney up, convinces Curtis that something strange is going on and that they need to hear Sydney out.

After the woman shoots Amos on the street in Talihina, there is a rainstorm, so the other children shelter in a shed on a nearby farm. Tula stands at the opening of the shed and whistles repeatedly, hoping that Amos will hear them and find them. Olive drifts off to sleep while they are waiting out the storm. When she wakes, Tula is gone. Worried that the farmer might come to the shed at any moment, Olive gathers Nessa, Pinti, Koi, and the pony and moves everyone into the woods where they can see the farm and the shed but will be safe from discovery. Tula returns a short while later with an injured Amos in tow; she had gone back to look for him. 

The children set out again, heading toward the mountains. Their pace is slow because of Amos’s injury, and it takes them hours to travel a few miles. Olive is anxious and frustrated but realizes that they cannot travel any further until Amos recovers. Once they have decided to stop, Dewey happens upon them.

The drama and mystery involving Alton Parker continue to develop. A few days after Sydney’s appearance at Valerie’s house, Valerie happens upon an overturned spray-tank truck. The driver of the unmarked vehicle is too shaken to tell Valerie any details, but it turns out that the truck belonged to Parker Construction and has not been inspected for a long time; its license plate belongs to a different vehicle. A few days after this incident, there are rumors among the locals that Valerie has a vendetta against Alton Parker. 

There are no major developments in the week after Sydney’s nighttime escape from Alton, even though a special agent had been called in to investigate. Meanwhile, Sydney has been placed in protective custody, but Valerie worries that this is only a temporary measure. 

Valerie is stressed about the case and becomes more nervous upon hearing reports of someone creeping around her home. She sends Charlie to spend a few weeks with her mom and grandmother in St. Louis, hoping to keep him out of harm’s way and to focus more deeply on the case in his absence. 

In a staff meeting with the other rangers, Valerie offers an update on the case. They confirmed the identity of Braden’s girlfriend, who rented a room at a nearby motel for four days. The rest of the ranger staff, including the chief ranger, dismiss the case as either insignificant or a fabrication of Sydney’s imagination. This dismissal—and its implications for her ability to do her job—angers Valerie. She decides to show the team a note that had been left on her car, reading “Pine Pigs Die.” The chief asks Valerie to stay close to the station for a few days in light of this threat. 

Since she has been asked to stay at the station, Valerie asks Edwin and Roy to take a look at the rockslide site from the top while they are out on their rounds. They will be on horseback in the area and agree to take a look after Valerie tells them that she heard someone in the area when she was with Charlie (the day he found the blasting cap). She advises them to be careful. 

Not long afterward, a conversation between Valerie and the chief ranger is interrupted by an urgent radio call from Roy. Edwin was gravely injured while they were out on their ride. Valerie and the chief rush to the scene. Edwin was up the slope on his horse. Roy was down below and thought he heard and saw someone. While investigating, he heard a loud noise, and Edwin toppled down the hill with his horse. 

Valerie feels guilty because Edwin and Roy were in the area at her request. She volunteers to look for Edwin’s horse, which ran off after tumbling down the hill.

Olive and the other children have been camped in a dugout near the road for two weeks. Dewey has joined them with his new travel companion, an old man with a failing memory who is often confused about where he is. The man has a mule and is on his way to the Winding Stair Mountains to find his long-lost love, from whom he was separated during the Civil War. 

The children have decided to make collective decisions by voting in “council meetings.” They have elected Tula as president. They have also voted that Dewey and Olive—the only two children who are old enough to work and have presentable clothing—should get jobs in town to earn money while they are waiting for Amos’s injuries to heal. Olive takes a job doing laundry for a local woman named Mrs. Paulson, but Dewey resists taking work. 

While Olive is in town working, Tula and the other children fish, collect berries and wood, and harvest other supplies to help support their group. Olive has named their temporary home Shelterwood Camp. When they get to the mountains, she plans to name their more permanent home there Shelterwood Town. Meanwhile, Olive shows Dewey how to write the letters of his name. He doesn’t want to write “e” twice, however, so he spells his name “Dewy” when he carves it into rocks and trees. 

Upon returning her work in town one day, Olive is distraught to find that Tula and Amos have given the old man permission to take her pony out for the day in addition to his mule. The pony belonged to her father and is very precious to Olive. She also worries that the pony is distinct enough to be recognized by Tesco or anyone else who might be looking for her.