Jayber Crow

After Della Keith dies in 1971, Mattie inherits the 500-acre family farm. Mattie and Troy’s only surviving child A. K. goes to business college and does not want to work the farm. Troy has continued his expansion of the farm at an exhausting rate, trapping himself in cycles of overspending leading to debt. Jayber had hoped Mattie would protect the farm, but her loyalty to Troy allows him to continue his destructive plans. They mortgage the entire place to purchase cows and equipment to open a dairy farm, which subsequently fails. Troy still comes to Jayber for haircuts, and Jayber restrains himself from violence against him as he brags about his conquests. “I don’t think he liked himself. If he did, why would he have worked and suffered so to be something he wasn’t—to make ‘something’ of himself?” (352). Troy considers himself an “agribusinessman,” an idea that is repellent to Jayber. One day Jayber takes his boat to hunt near Keith land. He discovers it ravaged, with all the trees plowed, fences torn down, and defunct machinery littering the ground. “It was no longer a place you could see anybody’s pride or pleasure in” (356). The only part of the property still resembling the old days is the yard Mattie tends. Troy has converted the rest into a large-scale pig farm. Jayber is grieved by the sight and wonders if Mattie truly loves Troy. Jayber reveals he and Mattie have been spending time together. Mattie eventually falls ill.

Athey’s Nest Egg is 50 acres of large, old-growth trees. Jayber takes long walks through the wood in all seasons. “Always, as soon as I came in under the big trees, I began to go slowly and quietly” (362). Mattie walks there too, and once they run into each other they begin to meet regularly for 14 or 15 years, though the meetings are never planned. They do not speak much and mostly just enjoy the scenery. Mattie does not look at Jayber or give him the same smile she might give her husband. One day they see a fox, another a rainbow, and one day they watch it snow. “The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw” (365). Jayber dreams he is Mattie picking flowers in a field. He finds Liddie’s bones and weeps on them. The bones come to life, and he carries her out of the wood. He says this is a book about Heaven and how life on earth is a little piece of eternity. Mattie becomes terminally ill, but she never tells Jayber. He learns from people coming to get a haircut. Jayber thinks about all the people he has lost and the power of memory to preserve them. He thinks he is now ready to die.

Jayber says this book has not been an entirely true account of his life as memory can be tricky, and he has the benefit of looking back on it all with a certain perspective. He says it ultimately is a book about how people love one another despite all the terrible things that happen in a lifetime. Jayber addresses a few unresolved issues. He wishes he knew what became of Clydie. She eventually married the other man and moved away, but Jayber lost contact with her. Cecelia Overhold inherited Roy’s money and moved to California with her nephew, who put her in a nursing home where she died alone. Jayber forgives her. Jayber can eventually forgive Troy. Jayber hopes he has lived a worthy life. “I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say ‘“Good-good-good-good-good!’ like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit” (371). Jayber relates a story of a man hunting in the woods who falls down a well and cannot escape. Having faith is believing the man trapped in the well is not lost. Jayber hears loud noises in the distance and knows what is happening. Troy is cutting down the Nest Egg to pay off his debts. Troy is proud of his conquest. Jayber wants to punch Troy but instead just feels profoundly sorry for him and thinks he should cradle him by the river. Jayber is so overcome that he has to lie down in the woods to recover. After falling asleep, he awakens, dresses, and takes Danny’s boat to the hospital to see Mattie. Jayber cries with Mattie over the loss of the trees, and she gives him the smile he has always wanted.