Olivia Carteret goes into early labor after encountering her biracial half sister Janet; both Olivia and her son Dodie survive.

At Dodie's christening party, Major Carteret reveals his racist beliefs in a debate with the more tolerant old Mr. Delamere.

Major Carteret joins forces with General Belmont and Captain McBane to plan a campaign to undermine Black political power in Wellington.

Dodie chokes on a piece of his ivory rattle, and Dr. Price summons a specialist surgeon from Philadelphia.

A train conductor forces Dr. Miller out of the sleeper car and into the segregated Black car, despite Dr. Burns's protests.

Major Carteret refuses to allow Dr. Miller to assist at Dodie's operation, citing personal reasons.

Josh Green visits Dr. Miller with a broken arm and confesses that he plans to die killing Captain McBane.

Tom Delamere dresses in Sandy Campbell's clothes, murders wealthy Mrs. Ochiltree, and plants stolen gold on Sandy to frame him.

The Morning Chronicle publishes a special edition identifying Sandy Campbell as the murderer of Mrs. Ochiltree.

Mr. Delamere searches Tom's room and finds blackface cork and stolen gold, proving Tom committed the murder.

Major Carteret announces Sandy's innocence outside the Morning Chronicle office but hides the truth that a white man committed the crime.

Olivia burns the marriage certificate and will that would prove Janet's legitimacy and entitle her to the Merkell estate.

Major Carteret republishes the Afro-American Banner editorial with inflammatory commentary, and armed white men take to Wellington's streets.

Josh Green kills Captain McBane with a bowie knife during the riot.

Janet rejects Olivia's offer of the Merkell name and inheritance but tells her husband to attend to the dying child Dodie.

The novel begins with Olivia Carteret going into early labor, establishing the central tension between her family and her biracial half sister Janet. Major Carteret, wielding his newspaper as a weapon, joins forces with Belmont and McBane to engineer the downfall of Wellington's Black-led government. A series of injustices — barring Dr. Miller from the operating room and framing Sandy Campbell for murder — reveal the pervasive cruelty of white supremacy. The campaign culminates when Carteret republishes an inflammatory editorial, triggering a violent riot in which Josh Green kills McBane and Dr. Miller loses his son. Only when Dodie's life hangs in the balance does the rigid racial hierarchy crack, forcing Olivia to appeal to the very family she has wronged. The novel ends ambiguously, with Dr. Miller rushing to operate on Dodie after Janet overrules her grief and instructs him to go.

The headline events of racism, riot, and reckoning in Wellington.

Mammy Jane notices a mole on baby Dodie's ear, decides he was born for bad luck, and buries a protective charm.

Dr. Burns resolves Dodie's crisis without surgery by patting the baby's shoulder blades and expelling the lodged object.

Dr. Price tells Dr. Miller that Dodie's operation started early; a servant named Sam later reveals this was a lie.

Major Carteret, Belmont, and McBane examine the Afro-American Banner together and identify an anti-lynching article to use as propaganda.

Major Carteret lectures Tom Delamere about his gambling and drinking; Tom is furious but bites his tongue to protect his engagement.

Mrs. Ochiltree tells Clara directly about Tom's bad reputation; Tom responds by proposing they move up their wedding date.

Clara nearly drops Dodie from a window while distracted by Janet's passing carriage; Mammy Jane suspects Janet cast the evil eye.

Tom Delamere attends a hotel cakewalk dressed in blackface as Sandy, which results in Sandy being suspended from his church.

Mrs. Ochiltree confesses to Olivia that she stole her father's marriage papers and cast Julia out of the Merkell estate.

McBane traps Tom in a rigged card game leaving him $1,000 in debt; Tom is later expelled from the Clarendon Club for cheating.

Drunk and walking home, Sandy sees a figure wearing his own clothes ahead of him and concludes he has seen his own ghost.

Mr. Watson tells Dr. Miller that the mayor is absent and the judge has no intention of preventing Sandy's lynching.

Mr. Delamere visits Sandy in jail and grows suspicious when Sandy refuses to explain where the stolen gold coins came from.

Mr. Delamere dies shortly after Sandy's exoneration; Belmont suppresses the updated will, allowing Tom to inherit the full estate.

Jerry begins buying skin-lightening and hair-straightening products; Major Carteret warns him that voting would cost him his job.

From Mammy Jane's dark omens about Dodie's birthmark to the intricate machinations of Tom Delamere's gambling debts, this pool traces the secondary events that give Wellington's racial crisis its texture and momentum. Major Carteret and his allies carefully select and plan to weaponize an anti-lynching editorial from the Black-owned Afro-American Banner, while Tom Delamere — morally bankrupt and desperate for money — disguises himself in blackface at a cakewalk, setting up Sandy Campbell as his eventual scapegoat. Mrs. Ochiltree's confession about the stolen marriage papers reveals the long history of inheritance theft that has kept Janet dispossessed. Sandy's near-lynching is averted through the efforts of Dr. Miller and Mr. Delamere, but justice is ultimately withheld when Belmont suppresses Mr. Delamere's updated will, allowing Tom to escape consequences and inherit the estate. These events collectively expose how legal, social, and economic systems conspire to maintain white supremacy while preserving the illusion of order.

The schemes, lies, and social machinery that fuel Wellington's racial crisis.

Dr. Price warns the Carterets that Olivia's difficult labor means Dodie will be their only child.

On the train south, McBane boards the segregated car and smokes an entire cigar beside an enraged Dr. Miller.

Janet confides to her husband that she has longed all her life for a single glimmer of recognition from her half sister Olivia.

Tom Delamere blames Lee Ellis for spreading rumors about his gambling and drinking, refusing to accept responsibility for his own behavior.

Ellis discovers Tom passed out drunk during a card game at the hotel but lies to Clara about where Tom actually was.

Tom borrows fifty dollars from Sandy Campbell to gamble again, loses everything, and is expelled from the Clarendon Club for cheating.

Mr. Delamere tells Major Carteret he would sooner believe his own grandson committed the murder than believe Sandy capable of such a crime.

Ellis realizes that the man he saw at the cakewalk and walking the street that night could not possibly have been Sandy.

Major Carteret pressures Mr. Delamere to provide a false alibi for Sandy rather than publicly expose Tom as the true murderer.

Olivia opens the sealed papers and discovers her father legally married Julia, which would make Janet a legitimate heir to the estate.

Olivia decides to ease her guilt by donating $10,000 anonymously to Dr. Miller's hospital rather than ever acknowledging Janet's true inheritance rights.

Dr. Miller finds Mammy Jane dying from a gunshot wound in the street and learns that his own son has been killed.

Major Carteret visits Dr. Miller for help with Dodie and finds him mourning his son; Dr. Miller blames Carteret directly for the death.

Olivia kneels before Janet and publicly acknowledges their shared parentage for the first time, offering half the Merkell estate.

Dr. Miller and Olivia race to the Carteret house to attempt Dodie's surgery with barely a moment to spare.

This pool traces the key turning points that shift the course of the novel, beginning with small but significant revelations — that Dodie will be an only child, that Janet secretly longs for Olivia's recognition — and escalating toward catastrophe. Tom Delamere's self-serving lies and Ellis's moral compromises reveal the web of complicity that allows racism to function, while Mr. Delamere's declaration that he would sooner suspect his own grandson than Sandy foreshadows the truth. As Major Carteret manipulates the aftermath of the murder to protect white honor, Olivia discovers and suppresses the papers that could transform Janet's life, choosing comfortable dishonesty over justice. The riot strips away every illusion: Mammy Jane is killed, Dr. Miller's son dies, and Carteret is forced to confront the human cost of what his campaign has produced. The novel's emotional climax arrives when Olivia kneels before Janet in long-overdue acknowledgment, and Janet — devastated but dignified — chooses not to return cruelty for cruelty.