Harry Auster

Harry Auster, called Irish by the other young men because of his carrot-colored hair, is one of the lumbermen involved in the 1901 crimes against Sara Tidwell and her son Kito. His decisive significance lies in his role in Kito’s drowning and in the family connection that later brings this history close to Mike Noonan: Harry is the son of Bridget Noonan Auster, Mike’s twice-great-aunt. The novel presents him not as an isolated name from the past but as a participant whose fear, complicity, and kinship connect a concealed atrocity to the present-day narrative.

Identity and Family Background

In the remembered events, Harry is a young worker associated with Jared Devore and the men who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair. Mike recognizes him among the figures appearing on the path, identifying him as the firstborn of Mike’s great-grandfather’s sister. Harry had been sixteen at the time of the earlier connection to the woodsmen; by the time of the crimes against Sara and Kito, he was still not yet seventeen.

Harry’s mother was Bridget Noonan Auster, called Bridey by her friends. Mike explains that Bridget married Benton Auster in 1884, when she was eighteen and Benton was twenty-three. The marriage was a hurried one, and Harry was born six months later. Mike has no reliable account of how the couple met, offering a clambake near Prout’s Neck only as a possibility rather than established history. He believes his mother’s guarded response to Bridget’s name suggests that she was regarded as the family’s black sheep, though he does not know why.

Participation in the 1901 Crimes

Harry takes part in the attack on Sara. During the assault, he is among the men restraining and mistreating her. When Jared orders the group to move her into deeper cover, the men do not follow that instruction; their eagerness overrides the caution. Harry’s conduct is therefore part of a collective crime, not an accidental encounter or an act separate from the group’s violence.

Harry later helps drown Kito in the lake. He takes the boy into the water while the other men remain nearby, and when Kito struggles, Harry pushes him beneath the surface. Kito’s arm repeatedly rises from the water, his hand opening and closing as he tries to survive. Harry recoils from the reaching hand, but continues. The account marks his awareness of Kito’s personhood against the racist denial he uses to suppress it: he reminds himself that the child is not kin to him, turning prejudice into a means of carrying out the killing.

Fear, Complicity, and Moral Evasion

Harry’s actions are bound up with fear of what his mother would think if she learned what he had done. Bridget had become religious, and Harry imagines facing her after the assault and murder as unbearable. That dread does not stop him from participating; instead, it helps explain his urgency to have the episode disappear. His terror of exposure is also shaped by the prospect of facing legal consequences for the assault.

After Kito scratches his neck, Harry plans to tell his mother that a thorny bush caused the mark, allowing her to kiss it without learning the truth. The small lie gives the crime an outwardly ordinary afterlife: the wound becomes a false explanation and a device for preserving the appearance of family intimacy. His wish to conceal what happened, rather than acknowledge or repair it, reinforces his culpability.

The Family Connection and Narrative Role

Harry’s identity is disclosed long after the historical events, when Mike discusses Bridget with Frank Arlen. Frank works out that Harry was barely seventeen when Kito was drowned. Mike then connects Harry’s fear of his mother’s reaction to the fact that Bridget had become devout. The revelation makes family history more than genealogical background: it supplies a personal route from Mike’s present to the men involved in the old crimes.

Harry also appears among the dead figures confronting Mike on the path, alongside Jared Devore and other men associated with the earlier history. Mike recognizes him through the family resemblance of lineage and place, while Harry’s participation in the past has become part of the threatening barrier confronting the living. The narrative thus returns Harry from an account of the crime as a named ancestor and as one of its perpetrators.

Consequences and Significance

The evidence does not describe Harry’s later life or state when he died. It does establish that his role in the drowning was concealed, and that his family connection remained largely obscured until Mike pieced together the account. Harry’s attempt to protect his standing with his mother through a fabricated explanation contrasts with the persistence of the truth in the novel’s recovered history.

Harry’s portrayal holds youth and responsibility together without treating one as an excuse for the other. He is very young, frightened of his mother, and caught within a group, yet he makes the choice to continue participating in Kito’s death. His story contributes to the novel’s account of how violence is sustained not only by the immediate perpetrators but by denial, prejudice, and the silence that allows a crime to remain buried across generations.