Lenora Laferty

Lenora Laferty is an orphan raised by Emma Russell whose intense faith and close bond with Arvin Eugene Russell give her a place in the Russell household, but not protection from the adults who exploit her. Her devotion to religion is both a sustaining practice and a source of hope: she prays for her murdered mother, waits for news of her missing father, and imagines that he may return. After Preston Teagardin exploits her and she becomes pregnant, his rejection leaves her isolated; she dies by suicide before Arvin learns what had happened.

Identity and Background

Lenora’s mother, Helen Laferty, brought her to Emma’s home while pregnant, and Emma later cared for the child there. Lenora grows up without memories of either parent. Helen is dead, while Roy Laferty has disappeared with Theodore Daniels, leaving Lenora to wonder whether her father is alive and whether he might come back. Emma urges her to forget Roy, but Lenora cannot relinquish the possibility of reunion.

The household she shares with Emma and Arvin is shaped by loss, but Lenora and Arvin are not related by blood. She regards their shared orphanhood and life under one roof as if fate had brought them together. Arvin, however, understands their bond as sibling-like and is uneasy when she speaks as though their meeting might mean something more. That mismatch between her hopes for connection and his protective but firmly familial affection becomes one of the quiet strains in their relationship.

Faith, Memory, and Daily Life

Religion structures Lenora’s ordinary days. She carries a Bible everywhere, as her mother did, and rises before the others to pray on her knees beside the bed she shares with Emma. Her prayers have two distinct objects: those she allows Emma to hear are for Helen’s soul, while her unspoken prayers concern news of Roy. The distinction reflects the different forms of grief she carries—one attached to a mother she knows is dead, the other sustained by uncertainty.

Several times a week, whatever the weather, Lenora visits Helen’s grave and reads aloud from the Bible, especially the Psalms, her mother’s favorite part of Scripture. By the end of sixth grade she knows them by heart. The visits link religious practice with an effort to preserve a relationship she cannot remember directly: Lenora reads beside Helen’s grave because Emma has told her what her mother loved. Later, she describes the shared home and their orphanhood as if events had been arranged so that she and Arvin would meet. Arvin finds this unsettling, and privately hopes she will find a boyfriend rather than read their closeness as a different kind of bond.

At school, Lenora’s piety and appearance make her a target for other children. She wears a bonnet and is mocked for her religious manner and pinched face. Arvin often fights those who bully her, even though he is embarrassed by her following him into school and complains to Earskell Russell that she will never be popular. His embarrassment does not cancel his loyalty: the narrator identifies defending Lenora as the reason for many of his fights. She is thus both a source of vulnerability in the schoolyard and the person whose mistreatment most often draws Arvin into conflict.

Preston Teagardin and the Pregnancy

In May, Lenora goes to the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified after school. She has avoided Arvin, who had waited for her before leaving without her, and finds Preston Teagardin inside the church. He has been opening the church around dismissal time and waiting for her over a period of weeks. Their contact continues over the following months. By the middle of August, after Teagardin has ended their meetings, Lenora realizes she is pregnant: she has missed her period twice, and a dress Arvin bought her no longer fits.

When Lenora tells Teagardin about the pregnancy, he does not offer help. He tries to persuade her that she may be mistaken and urges her to end the pregnancy, invoking the shame it could bring Emma. His response turns the church, a place where Lenora had previously felt God’s presence, into a setting of rejection. After leaving, she collapses near the road. She sees Pamela Sue Reaster enter the church looking happy, an image that sharpens the contrast between the welcome Lenora once sought there and the abandonment she has just experienced.

Death and Consequences

That evening, Lenora tells Emma she feels ill and stays home rather than attending the Thursday service. She has not eaten. While Emma and Arvin go to church, Lenora goes alone to the smokehouse and prepares to take her own life. She briefly hesitates, wondering whether Teagardin might change his mind, but the attempt goes wrong before she can reconsider or escape. Her death follows from a crisis she has kept from her family and from the preacher’s refusal to accept responsibility for the pregnancy.

The sheriff tells Arvin that Lenora was carrying a baby. Arvin initially rejects the news as a lie; the coroner estimates that she was about three months pregnant. This revelation changes the meaning of her death for him: the loss is not only that of the girl he treated as a sister, but of a danger and betrayal he had not known she was facing. Lenora herself is not present to explain her circumstances to him. Her story instead makes visible the gap between the protection Arvin tried to provide at school and the vulnerability she faced in the church, where authority and religion failed to keep her safe.