Sidney follows Alice and Colette to a lumberjack camp. Inside the Boxcar Library, Alice helps an older lumberjack choose a copy of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables to read to his granddaughter, who is afraid of his imposing appearance. Sidney takes photographs, claiming he is documenting camp conditions for a report to his father. That evening, the camp gathers around a fire where one of the lumberjacks reads aloud from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles to a rapt audience. Afterward, Sidney walks Alice back to the boxcar, and they sit together on the roof. He reveals that he was the only member of his platoon to survive the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He confesses that he attempted suicide in the hospital afterward, but the gun he found had an empty chamber. Sidney tells Alice that her pre-war gift to him, a copy of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, ultimately saved his life by validating his feelings of shame and making him feel less alone. Alice comforts him, kissing his forehead and cheeks and telling him he is enough just as he is.

In 1936, Sidney, Millie, Flo, and Oscar continue their tour of Montana for the guidebook. The car gets two flat tires, stranding them outside the town of Condon. Oscar admits to Millie and Flo that he sabotaged the tires with a hatpin to force a stop in the town, one of the three that Sidney deliberately excluded from their itinerary. Suspicious of Sidney’s motives, he wants to investigate. A young woman passing by in a pickup stops and gives them a ride to a mechanic in Condon. She introduces herself as Beth Franklin and is thrilled to learn that her passengers are writers and an editor, and that Millie is from faraway Texas. Beth has never been out of Montana, but she longs to see the world. Her mother was a fashion model in New York before moving with Beth’s father to Montana, where they fell on hard times. In Condon, the mechanic—Beth’s uncle George—says the repairs will take three days. Oscar and Flo recall that during their last visit to Condon, their boss, Professor Lyon, had a long conversation with the piano player at the local saloon and mentioned a bookmobile project in the area. Suspecting a connection, Millie heads to the saloon to investigate while Flo and Oscar agree to keep Sidney distracted.

In 1923, Colette is in Shelby, Montana, during the heavyweight championship boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons, when she spots Petey—her father’s killer—in the crowd. She follows him into a deserted alley and confronts him with her shotgun. After she names her father, Petey admits to the killing. However, he claims it was not the Company that hired him. Instead, he reveals that the man who paid him to kill Claude was the mayor of Missoula, Clark Monroe—Alice’s father.

The story returns to the lumberjack camp in 1924. As dawn breaks, Alice wakes to find a happily intoxicated Colette returning from a successful night of cards. Later, Sidney joins Alice on the roof of the boxcar and takes her picture. Their quiet morning is interrupted by the sight of a Ford automobile speeding toward the camp. Alice recognizes it as belonging to Mac. When Mac arrives, he breathlessly informs Alice that her father has suffered a severe heart attack and is on the verge of death.

Just as Alice prepares to leave with Mac, Colette stops them at gunpoint and accuses Mac of killing her father. Mac admits he was present for Claude’s murder but insists that Petey was the one who pulled the trigger. Their standoff is interrupted by the arrival of Finn, who confirms that Clark Monroe is near death. Finn then gestures toward Mac with his pistol, offering Colette the chance to shoot him. Believing Mac’s claim that he was not the shooter, Colette lowers her shotgun. Stating, “This is why you have me,” (338) Finn takes matters into his own hands and shoots Mac in the chest, killing him.

Alice screams and rushes to Mac, cradling him as he dies in her arms. The gunshot attracts the camp’s superintendent. Finn tells the superintendent that Mac killed Colette’s father and was going to go after her next, framing the shooting as protection. The superintendent’s suspicion of Mac is solidified when he finds a revolver in the dead man’s jacket, and he sends for the sheriff. Outside the boxcar, a devastated Alice confronts Colette. She slaps Colette across the face and furiously blames her for bringing Finn to the camp and causing Mac’s death. Colette accepts this blame and expresses sympathy for Alice’s loss, but she states that she cannot regret the death of a man who helped to kill her father.

It takes three hours for the sheriff to arrive. He accepts Finn’s account, and Alice and Sidney are eventually able to depart for Missoula in the Packard, though it seems unlikely Alice will reach her father in time. Colette, feeling no satisfaction from her revenge, feels increasingly doubtful that Mac’s death was just. She refuses to leave with Finn, insisting that she must remain with the Boxcar Library until Alice sends a replacement. Two weeks later, a new librarian arrives. Colette leaves on her own, planning to travel to a pond by Seeley Lake that she remembers fondly from her childhood with her father. While staying at a boardinghouse, she is awakened by an unknown assailant holding a knife to her throat.

In 1936, Millie learns from the Condon saloon’s piano player, Red Fox, that Colette Durand died of the flu in the area two or three years ago. This contradicts Oscar’s memory of Colette Durand dying more than ten years ago. Back in Missoula, Millie receives a telegram from Katherine instructing the team to send their work directly to the office of a state senator, Senator Walsh. She finds a telephone and calls Katherine, who explains that although the senator is anti-union and cannot be trusted, they have no choice. The plan is a compromise to placate the anti-communist McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which is scrutinizing the FWP. Katherine also tells Millie that the staff’s jobs depend on the quality of what is submitted at the next deadline, and that if the work is good, everyone will be kept on. Seeing a connection between the Boxcar Library, Sidney’s photograph of Alice, and the mystery of the two death dates for Colette Durand, Millie decides to go to the Missoula Library to get answers from Alice Monroe.

In 1925, Alice kneels at Mac’s grave. In the year since his and her father’s deaths, she has developed severe anxiety and is unable to leave her home for any reason other than to work at the library. Only reading brings her a sense of peace. She remembers Sidney’s words to her when he helped her fund the library: “because once upon a time, I needed books too” (359). Because Sidney was with her when Mac and her father died on the same day, she finds it hard even to think about him now. She knows the tragedy was in no way his fault, but he is connected in her mind with her most painful memories. He finds her at the cemetery and gently tells her she must forgive herself. After he leaves, Alice finds he has left her a copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, bookmarked to a page containing the line, “The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness” (361).

In 1926, Colette is in hiding in a sex-work establishment in Reno, Nevada. For two years, she has been on the run from hired guns, realizing someone has put a price on her head. She notes that the attempts on her life become more frequent and dangerous whenever she gets near Butte, Montana. A man named Roarke O’Callahan approaches her, revealing that he knows about the contract on her life. He tells her that the man behind it is Finn Benson, who has been a secret anti-union spy on the Anaconda Company’s payroll for nearly a decade. Roarke implies that he intercepted the contract and has no interest in killing a woman; he tells Colette he has bought her some time and will buy as much more as he can, warning her not to waste it.