At Fault

Set in late nineteenth-century rural Louisiana, the novel follows the intertwined fates of Thérèse Lafirme, a Creole widow who owns a large plantation, and David Hosmer, a St. Louis businessman, as their growing love collides with questions of moral duty and the limits of self-knowledge.

When Jérôme Lafirme dies, his neighbors expect the 30-year-old widow to mismanage the 4,000-acre plantation, Place-du-Bois, which stretches along Cane River. Instead, Thérèse rouses herself from grief after Uncle Hiram, a longtime servant, reports that workers are stealing cotton seed. She takes command and follows her late husband's methods successfully. A railroad soon arrives, forcing her to rebuild her home farther from the river. One day, her nephew Grégoire, who works on the plantation, announces that a stranger wishes to see her. David Hosmer, a serious man of about 40 from St. Louis, proposes to purchase timber rights from her land and erect a sawmill. After deliberating, Thérèse consents.

A year later, the mill thrives and Thérèse's daily company has become essential to Hosmer. She gently reproaches him for overworking and urges him to appreciate life beyond business. At the mill, she observes the unruly Joçint, a young man of mixed Creole and Native American heritage who resents the work and longs for the pine hills. Meanwhile, Hosmer's sister Melicent has come south for the summer, lively and eager for new experience. Grégoire, a brawny, handsome young man with a bold manner, takes Melicent out on the bayou in a pirogue, a narrow canoe. He reveals his troubled background: His father is dead, his mother returned to France, and creditors seized the family plantation before Thérèse rescued him from a dissolute life in Texas. Melicent privately falls in love with Grégoire but considers the relationship impossible, believing his rough speech would never suit her social world.

Thérèse persuades Hosmer to move from the mill into a cottage near the main house, but the local Black workers distrust the Hosmers' unfamiliar Northern manners and refuse to serve as household help. The Hosmers accept Thérèse's hospitality instead. One afternoon, riding home from visiting Joçint's elderly father Morico, Thérèse encounters Hosmer on horseback. He confesses that her absence would take the soul out of his life. She flushes, spurs her horse forward, and talks incessantly, giving him no chance to say more.

That evening, Melicent inadvertently reveals that Hosmer was previously married and divorced, not widowed. Thérèse feels betrayed. The next day, Hosmer recounts his story: He married Fanny Larimore after a whirlwind courtship but neglected her, absorbed in business. Their son was born and died at three. Then Hosmer discovered Fanny had developed an alcohol addiction, and they divorced. Thérèse calls his actions cowardly, arguing he married a weak woman, furnished her with every means to worsen that weakness, and deserted her. Overwhelmed by love and shaken by her conviction, Hosmer asks what she would have him do. She tells him to do what is right, which he understands to mean he must return to Fanny. In a brief, unguarded moment, they kiss before Hosmer rides away, resolved.

He travels to St. Louis and finds Fanny aged beyond her years. He tells her he wants to right past mistakes. She resists but gradually acquiesces. His friend Homeyer argues the plan is misguided, but Hosmer does not listen. He and Fanny remarry in a quiet ceremony. Walking alone afterward, Hosmer confronts the full weight of his decision: He harbors hatred for the woman to whom he must now be loyal and generous for a lifetime.

The couple arrives at Place-du-Bois, where Thérèse welcomes Fanny warmly. Fanny sobs that the place is lonesome and dreadful but gradually sheds some homesickness, drawn out by Thérèse's kindness. She confides her side of the marriage, complaining that Hosmer never talked to her. Thérèse listens and encourages Fanny to do her share in the reconciliation. During a group horseback ride, however, Fanny is left at Morico's cabin while Hosmer fetches a buggy. Old Morico offers her a glass of strong toddy. She pushes it away but, after pacing the room, seizes it and drains it. Her fatigue vanishes. She secretly pockets Morico's flask before leaving.

Thérèse, troubled by doubt, crosses the river to visit Marie Louise, her devoted former nurse who lives in a cabin near the eroding riverbank. She questions whether her interference in Hosmer's life was justified. At a meeting by a roadside spring, Hosmer tells Thérèse he did not remarry because he thought it right but because she thought it right. His situation is worse than before; his altered feelings make Fanny's presence loathsome. He begs her not to withdraw from his life. She tells him not to leave Place-du-Bois.

On All Saints' Eve, Fanny's intoxication is plain to Hosmer. In the dark woods, Joçint creeps to the mill with flammable liquid, douses the timbers, and sets them ablaze. Grégoire, who has been watching, confronts the unarmed Joçint and shoots him dead. Old Morico arrives in grief, drags his son's body to safety, then collapses and dies beside him.

Melicent shuns Grégoire after the killing and refuses even a parting word when she departs for St. Louis. Devastated, Grégoire goes on a violent spree in Centerville. When Père Antoine, the local priest, warns him he is on the road to hell, Grégoire replies that there is no such place, citing Melicent's Unitarian beliefs.

Fanny's drinking continues through the winter, secretly supplied by the young servant Sampson. Belle Worthington, Fanny's good-humored friend from St. Louis, visits Place-du-Bois and privately tells Thérèse that Fanny is acting strangely. Thérèse is thrown into deep self-doubt about whether she was right to push Hosmer back to Fanny.

Word arrives that Grégoire has been shot dead in Texas in a quarrel over being called "Frenchy." A parcel accompanies the news, containing locks of brown hair and a pair of scapulars, small devotional pendants worn for religious protection. One scapular is pierced by a bullet hole. Thérèse weeps. In St. Louis, Melicent orders mourning clothes and reflects on the summer with Grégoire, recalling for the first time the tremor of that one kiss.

Hosmer's domestic misery deepens. One morning, Fanny accuses Thérèse of being a false saint trying to steal her husband. Hosmer, seized by fury, grabs Fanny's arm and threatens to kill her. Horrified at himself, he flees. Returning to apologize, he finds the house empty: Fanny has crossed the swollen river to find Sampson. He follows and discovers her at Marie Louise's cabin, clearly having been drinking. She refuses to come home. While Hosmer is mid-river on the flat-bottomed ferry, a cry goes up: the riverbank beneath Marie Louise's cabin has broken away. Fanny appears at the door as the house topples into the water. Hosmer leaps into the current and reaches her, but a plunging beam strikes his forehead. He wakes in the ferry beside Fanny's body. She has drowned; Marie Louise is also lost.

A year passes. Thérèse, boarding a train to Place-du-Bois, finds Hosmer entering her car. They meet with a naturalness as if he had left her only moments before. He tells her the thought of her sustained him and that he waited until he could come to her free. She confesses doubt about whether her moral course was right. He replies that the full truth is not given to anyone to know, but they take a step toward it when they learn to distinguish the living spirit from the dead letter. One month later, Père Antoine marries them in Centerville. The novel closes on a June evening as they sit on the veranda of Place-du-Bois, absorbed in a generous, transforming love that has brought them to the fullness of their capabilities.