The cholera epidemic and deaths in the Boss and Sel families mark a sudden rupture in the life Jinot Sel had built with Minnie Boss and their children. After Mrs. Woodlawn brings well water to both households, the disease kills Minnie, the twins Lewie and Lancey, and, on the same day, Mrs. Boss and three of her youngest children. Seven fresh-cut stones later record the deaths with names, dates, and a single word: cholera. The catastrophe turns two neighboring families into a community of bereaved survivors, while sharpening the question of where Aaron Sel belongs and who can keep him safe.

Background and outbreak

The losses unfold amid the family history that shapes Jinot’s connections. He has already experienced the death of his son Amboise; that earlier bereavement had renewed his desire to find relatives, leading him to write to his half-brother Francis-Outger Sel and learn that Elise Sel lives in Boston. The search for family is therefore not new when the cholera strikes, but the epidemic gives it an immediate and painful meaning: Jinot’s household is reduced to him and Aaron.

The outbreak reaches the smaller town after cholera has been rampant in New York. Mrs. Woodlawn has brought her well water to Minnie, and when Jinot returns home at noon he finds Mrs. Woodlawn severely ill. The narrative identifies the water’s connection to the illness and reports the disease’s advance into the town; the threat is not a distant rumor but a danger crossing the threshold of neighboring homes.

Deaths in the two households

Jinot runs to Minnie’s room calling for help, but the disease has already overtaken her. Lewie and Lancey are still alive when he sees them, then die while he stands over them. The deaths happen so quickly that Aaron, who has been away in the woodshed reading a book of tales, is initially unaccounted for. He has eaten a piece of ham fat left from supper, has not drunk Mrs. Woodlawn’s water, and appears well. The contrast between the twins’ sudden deaths and Aaron’s survival leaves Jinot with one child and no assurance that the danger has passed.

Jinot takes Aaron to Hugh Boss’s home and tells him that cholera has taken his family, leaving only himself and Aaron. Hugh breaks down. His own household is also stricken: his pregnant wife is ill with symptoms resembling cholera, and the youngest children are sick. Mrs. Woodlawn had brought water to them as well. Hugh survives, but Mrs. Boss and the three youngest children die on the same day as Minnie and the twins. The epidemic thus cuts through both households at once, making the survivors’ loss shared without making it less personal.

Grief, reconciliation, and care

In the weeks after the funerals, Jinot and Hugh hate each other for months. The evidence gives no further explanation for the hostility; it records instead how grief holds them apart before bringing them together. They meet in the cemetery to set up seven fresh-cut stones, and there they reconcile. Each memorial bears only a name, a date, and the word cholera: a spare record of the outbreak’s human cost, and the point at which the bereaved men face that cost together.

Jinot and Aaron then move into Hugh’s household, sleeping in the haymow and helping care for the surviving children until Mrs. Boss’s sister can come from Danbury, Connecticut. Jinot swears to keep Aaron with him and protect him until he becomes a man. The promise gives their changed living arrangement a purpose: in the aftermath of losses that neither father could prevent, care for the surviving child becomes a concrete responsibility shared with Hugh.

Aftermath and family belonging

The deaths also change the terms of Jinot and Aaron’s relationship. Aaron repeatedly says he wants to go to Nova Scotia and know his Mi’kmaw relatives; he wants to be an Indian. Jinot’s vow to keep him safe sits alongside this desire, not as its resolution but as a new source of concern. The epidemic has left Aaron as Jinot’s only surviving son, yet the boy’s wish to seek his relatives points beyond the household in which he has been raised.

The narrative places the epidemic within a longer chain of family separation and reconnection. Jinot’s earlier efforts to locate Elise and Josime Sel show his hunger for kin after Amboise’s death; after the cholera, Aaron’s desire to reach his Mi’kmaw family carries that search into another generation. The outbreak is therefore both a domestic catastrophe and a turning point in the family’s story: seven deaths are marked in the cemetery, while the survivors must decide how to live together and what inheritance of kinship Aaron will pursue.