Edmund Foster leaves his Midwestern hometown on a train, heading west toward the mountains to start a new life.

The Fireball train derails and sinks into the lake, killing Edmund and all other passengers; no bodies are ever recovered.

Sylvia Foster raises her three daughters alone in Fingerbone after Edmund's death.

Helen returns to Fingerbone after years away and leaves daughters Ruthie and Lucille on Sylvia's porch before driving away.

Helen drives a borrowed car off a cliff and into the lake, dying by suicide.

Sylvia cares for Ruthie and Lucille for five years before dying, leaving everything she owns to the two girls.

Lily and Nona, Sylvia's sisters-in-law, come to Fingerbone to care for the girls after Sylvia's death.

Sylvie arrives in Fingerbone in spring and agrees to stay in her family home to raise her two nieces.

A severe flood fills the family's house with water for the first time, trapping Sylvie and the girls upstairs for days.

Lucille and Ruthie abandon any pretense of attending school and spend their days at the lake instead.

Lucille goes to a dance and walks to Miss Royce's house afterward, permanently moving in with her home-economics teacher.

The sheriff visits multiple times and formally announces a court hearing to evaluate Sylvie's fitness as Ruthie's guardian.

Sylvie urgently cleans the house, brings in fake flowers, and alters Ruthie's dress to prepare for the custody hearing.

Sylvie and Ruthie set the house on fire and flee Fingerbone by crossing the railway bridge over the lake in darkness.

Sylvie and Ruthie settle into a permanent life as transients, moving from town to town and never returning to Fingerbone.

This pool traces the major arc of the Stone family across three generations in Fingerbone, Idaho, beginning with the wanderlust that brought the family to town and the lake disaster that first shattered it. After Helen abandons Ruthie and Lucille and dies by suicide, the girls are passed between guardians until their unconventional aunt Sylvie becomes their caretaker. A severe flood, chronic truancy, and Sylvie's erratic housekeeping mark the years of an increasingly unstable upbringing. As Lucille drifts toward convention and eventually leaves for her teacher's home, Ruthie grows ever closer to Sylvie's transient spirit. When the town moves to separate Ruthie and Sylvie through a custody hearing, the two burn their house and flee across the railway bridge, beginning a permanent life of wandering together.

The defining milestones of the Stone family story.

Edmund builds a home on a hill in Fingerbone, marries Sylvia, and takes a job working on the railway.

The other two widows from the train derailment leave Fingerbone, claiming they can still taste and smell the tragedy in the water.

Molly, the oldest Foster daughter, becomes deeply religious and leaves Fingerbone to serve as a missionary in China.

Ruthie and Lucille live in two cramped rooms with only their friend Bernice for regular company before Helen drives them to Fingerbone.

Sylvia tells her granddaughters that as long as they own the roof over their heads, they are as safe as anyone can be.

During a bad storm, the aunts send Ruthie and Lucille out to skate on the lake, fearing the house could collapse.

The aunts write a letter to Sylvie informing her of Sylvia's death and inviting her to come care for the girls.

Sylvie stops at the train station to warm up before returning to tell the girls she has decided to stay with them.

Lucille is falsely accused of cheating on a test and stops attending school, pretending to be ill to avoid going back.

Leaves and papers accumulate in house corners while wasps, bats, and swallows take up residence in the neglected rooms.

The girls find Sylvie asleep on a park bench in town; Lucille runs away in embarrassment and sends Ruthie to wake her.

Sylvie and Ruthie row out to an island on the lake, where Sylvie believes children may be hiding in the woods.

Church women begin bringing food to Sylvie and Ruthie and tell Sylvie that Ruthie needs more order in her life.

Sylvie visits Lucille at Miss Royce's house with food; Lucille warns her that the town intends to take Ruthie away.

Ruthie hides in the orchard while the sheriff arrives looking for her and refuses his offer to stay with his family.

This pool fills in the texture of daily life in Fingerbone and the forces that quietly shaped each character's fate. From Edmund building his hill-top home to the aunts' fearful and inadequate caretaking, these events show how instability was woven into the family from the start. Sylvie's transient nature is visible in her stop at the train station before committing to her nieces, while the girls' slow drift from society is captured through their truancy and their increasingly wild home. Lucille's embarrassment — seen when she flees rather than wake her sleeping aunt on a park bench — foreshadows her eventual departure. The pool ends with the authorities closing in and Ruthie quietly refusing to be removed from Sylvie's care.

The smaller moments that shaped every major turning point.

All three Foster daughters — Molly, Helen, and Sylvie — leave Fingerbone in quick succession, leaving Sylvia entirely alone.

Helen receives a letter from the girls' father about another woman, tears it up without reading it, and is never heard from again.

Sylvia tends to her granddaughters scrupulously but with visible insecurity, as if dimes and cookies might not be enough to keep them.

During the flood blackout, Ruthie goes downstairs and finds Sylvie unresponsive in the dark; she punches her aunt in the stomach to reach her.

Sylvie tells the girls a story about a court taking a child from a mother who was too fearful to let her go.

The girls discover Sylvie walking out onto the railway bridge; Lucille warns her that if she fell, everyone would think she jumped.

Lucille turns on the kitchen light at night and she and Ruthie see for the first time the full disorder and decay of their home.

Lucille accuses Sylvie of never having had a husband; Sylvie responds by pointing to a magazine photograph as supposed proof.

The sisters have a serious fight when Lucille crumbles their grandfather's pressed flowers discovered inside a dictionary.

Ruthie and Lucille watch Sylvie brushing her hair and recognize the gesture as identical to how their mother Helen did it before she died.

Called to the principal's office, Lucille volunteers to make up all missed work but says openly she cannot speak for Ruthie.

Miss Royce visits Sylvie after Lucille moves out; Sylvie packs Lucille's belongings, and Lucille tells her to leave most of them for Ruthie.

Ruthie is left alone on the island for hours and digs into the ruins of a fallen cabin, longing to connect with those who once lived there.

Sylvie and Ruthie burn all their accumulated newspapers in the yard, aware the entire town is watching and understanding what it means.

A newspaper reports that Sylvie and Ruthie perished in the fire and the lake, freeing them to disappear into a transient life.

This pool focuses on the key moments of discovery, confrontation, and decision that drive each character to irreversible change. It begins with the slow dissolution of Sylvia's family as all three daughters abandon her, and moves through a series of revelations that expose the fragility beneath life in Fingerbone. Pivotal scenes — Ruthie striking Sylvie in the dark flood, the sisters glimpsing their dead mother in their aunt's gestures, Lucille crumbling the pressed flowers — show how each character is shaped by what has been lost. The pool traces the fracturing of the sisters' bond and Ruthie's deepening identification with Sylvie, building toward the frantic final preparations before their flight. It ends with the newspaper declaring both women dead, sealing their transformation from reluctant housekeepers into permanent wanderers.