 He also learns that she has saved clippings of all of the poems, articles, and editorials he has written.Chancey realizes that he may have been wrong about his mother, and therefore wrong about many of his other conclusions.He recognizes that he will have to “ponder his own questions and travel his way alone.”

Richter conducted extensive research in order to convey the historic speech of the early 19th-century pioneers of the Ohio Valley, many of whom originally emigrated from Pennsylvania and the Upper South.