55 pages • 1 hour read
Nancy E. TurnerThese Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “August 5, 1885”-“December 21, 1885”
Early in the chapter, Sarah corresponds with Jack about their upcoming wedding and anxiously awaits his return to the ranch. He returns in early October to discuss their trip to Texas to meet his father and sell him some of Sarah’s horses, but he leaves a couple days later. Sarah is left in turmoil, questioning whether she loves him. In early December, Jack writes to inform her of the date of their wedding and the arrangements for their trip to Texas, and Sarah decides she does love him. Ernest is present when they are married at Sarah’s ranch, as he is on leave from the military.
Before leaving for Texas, the couple spends two nights in Tucson. On their wedding night, Jack leaves Sarah in their hotel room to go run an errand. While she is alone, Sarah panics and decides she made a mistake marrying Jack; she wonders if he, like Jimmy, has gone to Maiden Lane. She prays to God to get her out of the situation, vowing to be as good and righteous as Savannah in return. Jack comes back, however, at once noticing Sarah’s tension. He produces a bottle of whiskey to help calm both his nerves and hers and says they need to talk.
He confesses that he had an Indian wife as a young man. The story concerns Sarah, but he assures her he loves her now. Jack then tells Sarah that his errand was to a jewelsmith; for their wedding, he gifts her a diamond-and-pearl brooch that belonged to his mother. She adores it and gives Jack an engraved pocket watch as his gift. The couple’s first night together is wonderful for Sarah—a strikingly different experience than being with Jimmy, which never felt so loving or intimate.
Chapter 13 Summary: “December 23, 1885”-“December 27, 1885”
Sarah, April, and Jack travel by train from Arizona to Austin, Texas, to meet Jack’s father, Charles (Chess) Elliot. Sarah is excited about her first train ride but also sad, as this will be her first Christmas away from her family. As they leave the station, she thinks of her brother Ernest, who will be back with the army before she returns; she incorrectly assumes this will be the last time she sees him.
During the train ride, three wealthy older ladies invite Sarah to tea. They are arrogant and condescending, however, and brag of their houses and their sons who attend West Point (formally the United States Military Academy, a university whose students—collectively known as the Corps of Cadets—commission as army officers upon graduation). Sarah does not enjoy her time with them, but Jack arrives with April and rescues her from their company. When the train pulls into Austin on Christmas Day, one of the women’s sons catches sight of Jack and salutes; Sarah watches as the young man praises her husband while his mother, now friendlier toward Sarah, feebly tries to ingratiate herself to them.
Chess takes the family back to his ranch home, which is the grandest, most richly outfitted house Sarah has ever seen. Christmas festivities are initially awkward for Sarah, who feels mocked by Chess and his friend, Mr. Arlington. However, she becomes more relaxed at the gift exchange, receiving a scarlet velvet cape from Jack and a pearl-handled pistol from Chess.
In the days that follow, Sarah decides Chess is a friendly man who has some of the same mischievous qualities as Jack. They tour Chess’s ranch, which is vast, and he shares a story of a time when, as a boy, Jack recited the Song of Solomon from memory at a church event. Jack and Chess laugh at the memory, but Sarah is horrified; later, Jack recites it for Sarah, and she realizes it is a beautiful poem.
Chapter 14 Summary: “January 11, 1886”-“February 6, 1886”
Sarah, April, and Jack say their goodbyes to Chess and depart for Arizona. However, when they reach the Territory, robbers hold up their train. Sarah hides April under her seat as Jack shoots one robber as he boards. Three more robbers board the train, and Sarah holds them at gunpoint as Jack takes them hostage; the remaining passengers are deboarded and robbed. After a long standoff with the outlaws outside the train, Jack and Sarah convince the criminals to let the passengers back on board in exchange for their three men. The robbers shoot a few passengers and a conductor, but they safely return most of the passengers. During the skirmish, one of the robbers shot Jack; upon their arrival at Tucson, Sarah has Albert take them to a hospital.
As soon as he is healed, Jack returns to work at the fort. When he comes back home to the ranch, Sarah tells him she is pregnant, which she had suspected in Chapter 13 (“Dec. 27, 1885”). Jack is happy at the news but insists to Sarah that he will not quit working for the military, which she does not ask him to do. Jack excitedly announces the news that Sarah is expecting to the rest of the family, and all are happy for them. Jack also asks Sarah to promise not to work too hard or lift anything heavy while she is pregnant; they have a hired man, Mason, for that now. Sarah is disappointed that Jack will not be home more often but tells him she will not ask him to quit the military.
Chapter 15 Summary: “February 8, 1886”-“May 10, 1886”
While Jack is away, a three-day rainstorm descends, flooding Sarah’s property and road and endangering her livestock. While she is clearing her porch of frogs, a rattlesnake coils up April’s chair and poises itself to bite. Terrified, Sarah grabs her rifle and shoots the rattler. The rain floods the adobe shed where Mason lives, so Sarah lets him bunk on her kitchen floor.
When the rain ends, Mama tells Sarah that Savannah is in labor, but with complications. Despite the flooded road, Sarah is determined to be at Savannah’s side, so she and Mason maneuver Rose to Albert’s house. Savannah gives birth to twin girls, Rachel and Rebecca; however, Rachel is a breech birth, causing severe bleeding. Savannah grows weak after the birth, and Albert takes her to the hospital in Tucson.
Albert and Sarah are frightened that Savannah may die, so Sarah pens a letter to the Lawrence family. A specialized doctor from Prescott arrives and proposes that a new treatment—a blood transfusion—may improve her prognosis. Sarah and a nun from the hospital give Savannah their blood, and she begins to improve. After several days, she returns home.
Jack returns to the ranch for a little over a week, helping Mason with repairs from flood damage. In March, Jack tells Sarah he must leave with the military in pursuit of Geronimo; Sarah is filled with dread, as he will be gone for a month. After he leaves, she receives a letter from Louisianna Lawrence, who reports that Ulyssa has tuberculosis and is under care in Tucson. Sarah also receives a letter from Jack informing her to be in Tucson on May 10 at 1:00 pm. She and the family make the trip. After delivering a care package and a letter to Ulyssa, they arrive at the fort, where Jack receives the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery.
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
In this section of the novel, Sarah’s experience of her relationship with Jack undergoes subtle but meaningful shifts. During their engagement and first few weeks of marriage, she is still tormented by confusing feelings that fluctuate between disdain for and fascination with Jack. She is unsure whether she loves him. She also worries about his character and panics that he might go to Maiden Lane, as her first husband did. As the section progresses, however, Sarah’s feelings settle into a resigned and jealous longing for her husband’s presence. Despite his repeated declarations of love, Sarah feels that Jack’s identity is not linked to their marriage but to his association with the military. This is easy for her to put out of mind when he is merely greeting a cadet at the Austin train station or when rich Christmas gifts dazzle her at Chess’s ranch, and she grows accustomed to having her husband close at hand. Once they return to the Arizona ranch, however, Jack’s focus on his military duties hits Sarah with full force. He is a cavalryman first; then he is her husband. She grumbles to her diary that “nothing” she does “or say[s] can compete with the admiration of a bunch of ragged soldiers” (239). While she no longer questions whether she loves him, Sarah nevertheless grows quietly grief-stricken over his unequal attention to April, herself, and their unborn child.
This shift in Sarah’s experience of her marriage first takes shape the day before robbers descend on their train, as the newlyweds ride homeward from Austin. Much like her earlier inability to admit to her romantic interest in Jack, in Chapter 14, Sarah is incapable of articulating her conflicted feelings about her husband’s relationship with the army. Jack gives Sarah his shares in a silver mine, which amount to “enough to hire a man” and “take on some more acreage” at the ranch (238). His proposition signals that he will mostly be absent from their home—something Sarah had not considered during their long, luxuriant trip to Austin. This deeply upsets her, though she does little to articulate these feelings to Jack for the rest of this section, even after disclosing her pregnancy. Apparently sensing her frustration, Jack twice insists upon his unwillingness to leave the army.
Although she long ago left off her reading of The Happy Bride, Sarah’s narration in this section reveals her continued tacit struggle to be a good wife. This time, however, she is married to a man who is markedly different from her first husband. Unlike Jimmy, Jack is not present at home; also, unlike her feelings for Jimmy, she truly loves Jack and yearns for his presence. Thus, in this section of the novel, Sarah principally concedes to Jack’s wishes as a means of keeping him as close to her as she can. Moreover, when Sarah tries, however weakly, to articulate her feelings to Jack, he offers her little reassurance. For example, out of worry for his safety before he leaves to chase Geronimo, she tells him not to ask their children “to grow up without a father” (265); Jack responds that a child needs a mother more than a father and continues to play with April by a creek, although he apologizes when he sees that Sarah is upset. As a result, Sarah’s diary registers her dread of Jack’s departures, as well as her mixed feelings of “anger and hurt and love and fear and longing all at once” each time he comes home (270).
In this section of the novel, Sarah’s narrative voice develops a reticence that is unlike elsewhere in the novel so far. While she is not in the deep state of despair of her marriage to Jimmy, a quiet desperation takes shape in Chapters 12 through 15. She longs for Jack’s sole devotion to her, their family, and their land; she resents “that army, and Geronimo, and duty” for keeping her husband absent for longer periods than he is present (269). By the section’s close, Sarah even registers a subtle resentment of Jack: He explains that he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for succeeding at doing “something hare-brained” (272), while Sarah understands herself as actively trying “not to do anything hare-brained in the first place” (272) out of her devotion to April and their unborn child.
