The Farming Of Bones

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998

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Chapters 1-3 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

It’s 1937 in the Dominican Republic and lifelong servant Amabelle Désir suffers from nightmares about her parents’ drowning. Sebastien Onius, a handsome sugarcane worker and Amabelle’s lover, tries to soothe these nightmares. He tries to talk her out of her dream state and then tells Amabelle to strip so “you will know that you are fully awake and I can simply look at you and be happy” (2) Amabelle does this and he compliments her beauty. Her inner monologue does not match the scene, however. After the striptease, she says to herself, “It’s either be in a nightmare or be nowhere at all” (2). She falls back asleep thinking about her father’s warning about not playing with shadows when she was a child.

Chapter 2 Summary

Señora Valencia, Amabelle’s wealthy childhood friend and her boss, goes into labor two months prematurely. Amabelle rushes to her side to help while they wait for Papi, her father, to get the doctor. Amabelle’s parents specialized in “births and deaths,” so she has some knowledge surrounding birthing procedures and is able to safely deliver what turns out to be twins, a boy and a girl, before the doctor ever arrives (5). The girl is both much smaller and darker than the boy. Señora Valencia names the daughter Rosalinda after her mother but tells Amabelle she is worried that because of Rosalinda’s dark skin color she may be “mistaken for one of your people” (12).

Chapter 3 Summary

In the middle of the night, Amabelle and Sebastien are laying in the dark, talking to each other to keep from falling asleep. He asks questions about her mother and Amabelle reveals that her mother was a taciturn woman who rarely smiled. She says she respected her mother’s “tranquility” (13). Amabelle explains that despite her mom always having a somber facial expression when she was alive, her mother is always smiling in Amabelle’s nightmares.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The various weights that bog down Amabelle’s life start to manifest in the first three chapters. On a personal level, Amabelle has suffered from the unexpected and premature death of her parents, a fact that haunts her unconscious mind and robs her of healthful sleep. Readers also learn that Amabelle is in a relationship with someone who, while kind to her, treats her like a child, and who sometimes can be a “shadow” on her life (4). On a societal level, Amabelle’s race has burdened her as well. It’s clear that Amabelle’s race is the cause of her subservience to Señora Valencia and Papi. Even Sebastien’s supposed compliment, that she “glow(s),” despite her skin color, reveals her to be a victim of racism. All of these issues compound to make Amabelle appear to be a somewhat insecure woman living in difficult conditions.