Dartmouth is a setting of urban transition and kin-based support in the later part of the novel. After high school, Jeanne Sel and Felix Mius move into Alice Sel’s home, enroll at community college, and take part-time jobs; from this shared household, Jeanne’s interest in forest knowledge leads her toward Sapatisia Sel on Cape George. Dartmouth thus joins education, family care, and the search for knowledge that formal schooling has left out.

A Home for Study and Urban Life

After graduating from high school, Jeanne and Felix move to Dartmouth to live with Alice Sel. Her home is also a child-care center and a temporary refuge for young Mi’kmaw people trying out urban life. The cousins enroll at community college and work part-time, building a route toward university through the required two years of college. Their goal is ambitious, and the narrative makes clear that the odds are against them; living with Alice gives them a shared base from which to attempt it.

The household’s crowdedness is part of its character. Toddlers fill the lower level, while friends and relatives occupy the upper one. Jeanne initially thinks the house is a madhouse, but one September Saturday she comes downstairs to find the kitchen empty and quiet, its scrubbed table and mismatched chairs warmed by autumn sunlight. The contrast gives the domestic space more than a practical function: the kitchen’s usual traffic embodies the family network that makes city life possible, while the sudden stillness lets Jeanne see its beauty.

Kinship and Mutual Support

Alice’s home gathers relatives across generations and offers an everyday setting for care. At the kitchen table, Alice and her sister Mary May discuss the cousins’ hard work. Alice sees their closeness as protective, like that of a brother and sister; Mary May worries that their intimacy might become romantic because they are cousins. Alice dismisses the concern, noting that Felix takes other girls to the movies when he can afford it, while Jeanne would rather see a movie alone. The conversation presents the cousins’ bond as close but not romantic, and shows family members interpreting their companionship differently.

The cousins’ pursuit of education depends on practical support as well as ambition. They combine classes with part-time work while staying with Alice, whose home accommodates children, relatives, and young people finding their footing in the city. Later, when Alice falls ill with influenza, Jeanne stays home from classes to run the child-care center and cook. Alice’s friends from the reservation bring Mi’kmaw medicines, and Jeanne is delighted to see them used and to hear their names, even though she does not understand them. Dartmouth is therefore not a simple break from community life: family obligations and knowledge carried by relatives remain present in the urban household.

From Education Toward Mi’kmaw Knowledge

Jeanne’s studies lead her to question what they do not teach. While reorganizing papers and books at her study table, she finds a profile of Sapatisia Sel in a power company newsletter. The article says that Sapatisia lives on Cape George and has spoken about old Mi’kmaw medicinal plants no longer being usable. Jeanne wants to understand that statement and suspects Sapatisia may know how to help the forest. She proposes that she and Felix go to find her, but their lack of a car makes the journey difficult.

Dartmouth remains the starting point as the cousins look for a way to travel. Alice tells them that Johnny Stick may be able to give them a ride. She explains that he has attended truth-and-reconciliation meetings for several years and that it helps to know one is not alone. When Felix asks what happened to him, Alice refers to the abuse he suffered as a child at residential school. This connection links the cousins’ present-day search to an earlier history of violence and survival: access to the journey depends on a man whose own experience of the school system is part of the family and community’s shared past.

When the first attempt to reach Sapatisia fails, Mr. Stick feels obscurely responsible and seeks out Lobert Sel, whose memory is failing. Lobert nevertheless seems to know where Sapatisia’s small house stands; he marks Pussle Cove on a smudged piece of paper and identifies the lighthouse a couple of kilometers to the east as a landmark. Alice puts the paper beside Jeanne’s plate that evening. Jeanne then withdraws money from her East Coast Credit Union savings account and gives it to Felix to rent a car, since she has no license. Dartmouth’s household, savings, and network of relatives and acquaintances turn the search from an intention into a practical journey.

Narrative Significance

Dartmouth is defined less by an isolated landmark than by the relationships and routines concentrated in Alice’s home. It holds the cousins’ study, paid work, and shared ambitions alongside child care, illness, cooking, and the exchange of medicines. Its crowded kitchen offers a vivid counterpoint to the solitary study table where Jeanne first encounters Sapatisia’s profile: education begins in books and formal schooling, but it also leads her to knowledge preserved and practiced within Mi’kmaw networks.

The location’s significance lies in this movement between urban opportunity and communal memory. Dartmouth enables Jeanne and Felix to pursue college, yet their progress depends on kinship and on connections beyond the classroom. Alice’s hospitality, Johnny Stick’s offer of transport, Lobert’s remembered directions, and the medicine brought by reservation friends all make the city a meeting point rather than an endpoint. From Dartmouth, Jeanne’s search for forest knowledge begins as both a practical trip and a reconsideration of what counts as education.