A Life Between Two Departures

This thread traces Rabo’s repeated departures and returns, from leaving his childhood home to retreating into the barn and rejoining other people.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Leaving San Ignacio

The First Departure A Boy on the Train Rabo leaves his father and California to seek an apprenticeship in New York. The journey feels like birth, but he arrives at Grand Central Station with no one there to meet him. Beginning Alone His confidence meets the realities of the Depression and Gregory’s cold welcome. The departure opens a path toward artistic work, while beginning a long pattern of loneliness in unfamiliar places.

The Hermit’s Retreat

Withdrawal from the World A Family Gone Rabo comes home to find Dorothy and their sons gone, and his own paintings beginning to fail. The losses arrive close together, collapsing the domestic future he believed he was building. Eight Years Alone He becomes a hermit, living in the potato barn and cutting himself off from ordinary life. The retreat protects him from demands but also suspends any possibility of repair or new companionship.

The Return to Company

Reentering the House A Guest Who Will Not Leave Circe challenges Rabo’s isolation by asking questions, giving assignments, and bringing the household into motion. He resents the intrusion while responding to the attention. A Painter Among Visitors When he reveals the barn work and opens it to the public, Rabo moves beyond his self-appointed role as museum guard. He does not regain his earlier family, but begins participating in a community again.

1933, when Rabo travels to New York at seventeen

After Dorothy and the children leave, following the 1956 deaths

From Circe’s arrival through the novel’s ending