Maren Yearly

Maren Yearly’s search for her father brings her to a phone booth in Sandhorn, where a single directory entry turns an uncertain journey into a possible reunion. Later, reading Francis Yearly’s notebook gives her glimpses of his life and his longing to know her; her own list of deaths, by contrast, records the burden she carries and the limits she places on confession.

Identity and the Search for Her Father

Maren travels with Lee toward her father’s hometown, worried that their paths may soon divide. The drive is unusually quiet, and she reads Lee’s silence as a possible attempt to push her away. Even as she prepares to look for her father, she wants Lee to stay with her after she finds him.

In Sandhorn, near Lake Superior, Lee stops beside a phone booth on the town’s main street. Maren takes her notebook and change purse inside and searches the back of the directory with trembling fingers. There is only one listing: Barbara Yearly. The address and phone number make the search suddenly concrete, though the brevity of the discovery does not resolve what she will find.

Reading Francis Yearly’s Notebook

At a later meeting with her father, an orderly tells Maren that Francis wants her to read the notebook he wrote for her. She opens it and recognizes the pages as her father’s handwriting; when she looks up, his eyes are wet with unshed tears. The notebook begins as a message to a child whose name and sex Francis does not know. He hopes the child will come, but fears being hated and acknowledges that the mother may never have told the child about him. He also worries that, by the time Maren arrives, he may no longer be able to answer her questions.

The notebook offers intimate details alongside that uncertainty. Francis recalls a woman as his sunshine and describes the pain of knowing he will never see her again. In another entry, the writing has grown larger and more childlike. He describes the ward’s monthly birthday gathering, with vanilla sheet cake and bingo, and explains that the Yearlys assigned January 1 as his birthday because he never knew the actual date. He wishes he knew Maren’s birthday; Travis has told him it is April 1, 1991, making her almost nine at the time of that entry. Francis also identifies Travis as his friend and says Travis is the only person on the ward who knows him.

The Confession and Its Record

Maren’s own account of her past takes the form of a first-person confession copied onto pages she carries in her rucksack. The list begins with Penny Wilson, in her twenties, whose death she places in or near Edgartown, Pennsylvania, in 1983. It proceeds through Luke Vanderwall, age eight, at Camp Ameewagan in the Catskills in July 1990, and Jamie Gash, age ten, in Badgerstown, Maryland, in December 1992.

The remaining entries extend the record across several years and states. Maren names Dmitri Levertov, eleven, in Newfontaine, South Carolina, in May 1993; Joe Sharkey, twelve, in Buckley, Florida, in October 1994; and Kevin Wheeler, thirteen, in Fairweather, New Jersey, in December 1995. She then lists Noble Collins, fourteen, in Holland, Maine, in April 1996; Marcus Hoff, fifteen, in Barron Falls, Massachusetts, in March 1997; and C. J. Mitchell, sixteen, in Clover Hills, New York, in November 1997. The final entry is Andy, whose surname she does not know, identified as an employee of the Walmart near Pittston, Iowa, in June 1998. Maren’s list calls her responsible for these deaths; it supplies dates, ages, and locations, but not an account of how each death occurred.

Choice and Narrative Significance

After Sully has been gone for an hour, Maren takes the photocopies from her rucksack, crumples them, and feeds them to the fire one by one. The act follows her judgment that telling the truth will not free her; she expects instead to end up like her father. Destroying the copies does not erase the deaths she has recorded, but it closes off this particular attempt to make the confession a path to release.

She searches the cabin for something to distract herself. Its shelf holds old paperbacks, mostly spy thrillers and romances she does not want to read. She looks for hot chocolate and the ingredients for grilled cheese, hoping to make the cabin feel like home, but finds no bread, cheese, or cocoa powder and settles for beef jerky. The shift from a carefully dated account of deaths to an unsuccessful search for ordinary food leaves Maren between disclosure and retreat: she has set out the record, destroyed its copies, and turned toward the immediate business of getting through the night.