57 pages • 1-hour read
The Patron Saint of Liars
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Part 1, Chapter 1-Part 2, Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Habit” - Part 2: “Rose”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
The first chapter has an omniscient narrator and focuses on the town of Habit, Kentucky, where most of the novel takes place.
In 1906, George Clatterbuck discovered a newly formed hot spring in one of his back pastures. At first, because of the spring’s sulfurous smell, he assumed this new spring was a bad sign about the health of his land. Soon after his discovery, the Clatterbucks experienced several hardships: Their horses got sick, and all of the cows got mastitis and were unable to feed their calves.
One night, the horses escaped their corral, and George found them at the hot spring, drinking the water. He worried that they would get sick and die, but instead, their illness cleared up immediately. On a whim, he drove all the cows to the spring so they could drink the water, too, and soon after, they could produce milk again. George didn’t tell anyone about all this because he was unsure if it was “the work of the Devil or the Lord” (5).
Then, George’s daughter, June, got sick. When she was close to death, George forced her to drink some of the spring water. The next morning, June was completely well again. Seeing how the water saved June’s life, George began telling people about the spring. Soon, people from all over started visiting the spring to be healed.
Lewis Nelson, a horse breeder from Lexington, Kentucky, heard about the spring and was interested in how it could help his young wife, Louisa, who had severe rheumatoid arthritis. The two came to Habit to visit the spring, and Lewis was surprised that there was no hotel to stay in. Louisa was soon healed by the spring, and Lewis convinced George to let him build a hotel near the spring so more people could be healed. They decided to name it the Hotel Louisa. The Hotel Louisa was extravagant and ornate, and the townspeople, including the Clatterbucks, avoided the hotel for the most part.
In 1929, the spring suddenly dried up, and as a result, people stopped coming to the hotel. The Nelsons hired people to try to revitalize the spring, but they were unsuccessful. The Nelsons remained at the hotel for a few years and then moved out. Lewis donated it to the Catholic Church, and the Hotel Louisa was turned into a retirement home for nuns. However, the nuns found the hotel to be too ornate for their tastes and spent most of their time at the Clatterbucks’ home. Eventually, the retirement home was shut down, and, in its place, the Catholic Church opened a home for unwed pregnant women.
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary
The second part of the novel is told from Rose’s point of view.
Rose is driving from California to Kentucky after leaving her husband, Thomas Clinton. In her final note to him, she told him she was leaving and not to try and find her; she didn’t tell him that she was pregnant with his child. Rose thinks of this as a “lie of omission” (11).
When Rose was 19, she was unsure what she was supposed to do with her life, so she decided to wait for a sign from God. When Thomas asked her on a date, she assumed that it was her sign from God.
Before her marriage, Rose lived with her mother, Helen, who sold cosmetics at a local department store. Helen is extremely beautiful and never remarried after her husband died in a car accident. Helen helped Rose prepare for her date with Thomas, telling her that she was very pretty; however, Helen added that life is always harder for pretty girls because they get distracted and confused by their own beauty.
Thomas picked Rose up in his car, and they went to eat at an Italian restaurant. Rose noticed that Thomas was extremely quiet and their conversation was stilted. When they finished dinner, Rose told him she’d like to go for a walk. As they walked on the beach, Thomas revealed that he knew a lot about Rose because he’d been following her for the last seven months. He admitted that it was an odd thing to do, but he said he couldn’t look away from Rose’s beauty. Rose started to cry because she was moved by how romantic Thomas was being. She was overwhelmed by her desire for him and mistook this as the sign from God she was waiting for. She unbuttoned her dress and tried to kiss him, but he was awkward and pushed her away. He then drove her home in silence. However, the next day, he called to ask her out again. The two got married at the end of the summer and moved in together.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
After Thomas and Rose got married, Thomas taught her to drive. She had never learned because Helen was scared of driving after her husband died in a car accident. Rose fell in love with driving, and once she got her license, she drove everywhere she could think of. She drove all over California and sometimes was late getting home to Thomas in the evening. However, Thomas never got upset.
As time went on, Rose began to feel anxious and trapped in the marriage, and she began to wonder what made something a sign from God. As her panic escalated, she drove more since driving was the only thing that calmed her. She took some temporary secretarial work that took up some of her time, but she spent most days just driving around.
When Rose married Thomas, Helen married her long-term boyfriend, Joe. Helen and Rose met for lunch often, but they kept their conversations light. Rose never felt comfortable talking to Helen about her anxiety regarding her marriage.
When Rose discovered she was pregnant, her panic escalated and she decided to make a change. She didn’t say anything that morning when she dropped Thomas off at the high school where he taught math. Then, she went to her priest, Father O’Donnell, and asked for directions to a home for pregnant women. He told her she could go to Saint Elizabeth’s in Kentucky, but he reminded her that divorce is a sin and that her mother and Thomas would be devastated if she left. Rose told him that she would just have to give her mother up as penance for her mistake. As she drives out of California, she has to pull over twice because she is crying so hard.
She has stocked the car with water and has some money reserved from her temp jobs. On her way to Kentucky, she goes to great lengths to protect the car, stopping often to take care of it and maintain it. One night, she calls her mother, and Helen begs her to come home, telling her that Thomas is very upset. Rose tells her she can’t come home because her life there isn’t complete. The two women cry on the phone, and Rose later realizes that she has to distract herself to keep from thinking about Helen or Thomas.
When she crosses over into Oklahoma, she picks up a hitchhiker, Billy, who says he is heading to his parents’ house because his father needs help on the farm. Rose drives him to his destination, diverting from her route to Saint Elizabeth’s. Billy’s parents give her dinner, and she decides to spend the night there. Billy wakes Rose in the middle of the night to tell her that he has lied and that he has gone AWOL from the army to come home to his parents. She tries to calm him down, and he tells her he knows she’s lying about something, too, and that she could stay with his family instead of traveling on. Rose says nothing and leaves before anyone wakes up the next morning.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Rose arrives in Habit and stops at a gas station to ask for directions to Saint Elizabeth’s. The woman working at the gas station refuses to sell her gas, and Rose realizes that it’s because the woman doesn’t approve of Rose’s decision to go to Saint Elizabeth’s.
When Rose arrives at Saint Elizabeth’s, she is surprised by how ornate it is. She notices a historical marker that tells the story of the hot spring and hotel and is reading it when one of the nuns, Sister Bernadette, approaches her. As they walk together to meet with the Mother Superior, Mother Corinne, Rose feels overwhelmed by all the pregnant girls she passes.
Mother Corinne reveals that Father O’Donnell called to talk to her about Rose, but she doesn’t tell her what exactly he said. Rose lies and says that her baby’s father died in a car accident, which seems to annoy Mother Corinne. Afterward, Sister Bernadette takes Rose to her room.
After taking a nap, Rose wakes up to meet her roommate, Angie. As they chat, they discover that their due dates are close. Angie has been at Saint Elizabeth’s for eight days and gives Rose information that will make her time at Saint Elizabeth’s easier. She reveals that Mother Corinne hates it when they say their babies’ fathers died. Additionally, she explains that there is a hierarchy at Saint Elizabeth’s: Girls closest to their due dates get preferential treatment.
That afternoon, Rose sees a man walking across the field and wonders who he might be. Angie says his name is Son; he is Saint Elizabeth’s caretaker.
At dinner, the girls who are closest to their due dates sit at the head table with the nuns. Angie and Rose sit with two others, Regina and Beatrice. Rose thinks the food is terrible, but Angie encourages her to eat. Suddenly, at the head table, one of the girls’ water breaks. Two nuns get up with her to take her to the hospital in Owensboro to deliver her baby.
Later that night, Rose asks Angie what will happen to the girl and her baby. Angie explains that after the delivery, the doctors give the girls some sleeping medication, and when they wake up the next morning, their baby has already been sent to the new parents. Angie reveals that no one keeps their baby; a lot of girls say they will deliver at Saint Elizabeth’s so they can spend more time with their babies before putting them up for adoption. However, no one has yet had the bravery to deliver at Saint Elizabeth’s, instead opting to deliver in a hospital before returning to their hometowns to resume the lives they had before they got pregnant.
Part 1, Chapter 1-Part 2, Chapter 3 Analysis
The first section of the novel is the only one narrated from an omniscient point of view. It focuses on the town of Habit, Kentucky, where the majority of the novel takes place. This first section reveals Saint Elizabeth’s origin story, and more importantly, it highlights the unchanging, traditional nature of Habit’s residents. The townspeople are suspicious of change and outsiders. As a result, Saint Elizabeth’s and its residents continue to be ostracized by the people of Habit—they have disliked the residents of Saint Elizabeth’s for decades. The nature of the town is reflected by its name—“Habit”—and the town becomes a vivid character in the novel. This highlights how setting impacts the characters and the plot, and it also emphasizes that the theme of The Benefits and Shortcomings of Tradition and Faith will play a big role in the novel. Habit represents an unchanging place that is stuck in its ways, which can be a source of frustration as well as comfort.
In Habit, the residents view June Clatterbuck’s recovery from her childhood illness as a miracle. She is seen as “a kind of a saint in the town, but all that really mean[s] to June [is] that there [are] few boys bold enough to ask her out, and the ones who [do think] it would be a sin to try and kiss her” (6). June resists attention, even refusing to allow the hotel to be named after her, because she doesn’t want to intimidate the few boys who are still brave enough to be interested in her after she became something of a legend in town. Ultimately, June never marries or leaves the family farm—which includes Saint Elizabeth’s—implying that she has been somehow trapped by her miracle, which made her a canonized figure of Habit. While the spring water saved her life, it also confined her to a life of loneliness, showing that faith and miracles can be simultaneously marvelous and frustrating.
The first sentence of Part 2—Rose’s section—indicates that her character will wrangle with the theme of The Complexity of Truth and Lies. This section opens with the line, “I was somewhere outside of Ludlow, California, headed due east toward Kentucky, when I realized that I would be a liar the rest of my life” (13). Rose tells many lies in the rest of the novel, and most of them are lies of omission, just like the first lie she admits to in the novel: She didn’t tell her husband, Thomas, that she was pregnant with their child before she left him. Rose understands that this lie is so big that she will likely spend the rest of her life trying to cover it up, which is why she believes she will “be a liar [for] the rest of [her] life” (13). Rose claims the identity of a liar because she feels unable to define herself in other ways, especially through her relationships—as wife, daughter, or mother—having abandoned these links in her determination to run away.
These first chapters also develop the theme of The Power of Mother-Daughter Relationships by showing the close relationship that Rose has with her mother, Helen. Rose and Helen enjoy spending time together. When Helen watches Rose prepare for her date with Thomas, Rose remembers watching Helen get ready for dates when she was younger. Rose’s father’s death pulled the women closer, and before Rose’s marriage, the two are inseparable; Rose even travels to Helen’s department store to watch her mother sell cosmetics to women. Rose inherits her beauty from Helen, and both women struggle to deal with the impact that their looks have on their lives; they use their beauty to get by in the world and are constantly aware of how others perceive and judge them. This, too, brings them closer, as they believe the other can relate.
However, their relationship changes after Rose marries. It becomes shallower—perhaps because Helen also marries and feels that Rose is now no longer her responsibility to care for. Rose never confides in her mother about her anxiety and doubts regarding her marriage to Thomas; she struggles with these feelings and doesn’t understand them herself, so she doesn’t voice them to her mother. This doesn’t change her feelings for Helen, though; when Rose decides she must punish herself for leaving Thomas, she decides she will give up her relationship with her mother as well, as “penance,” since Helen is “the thing [Rose] love[s] most in the world” (37). As a result of cutting herself off from her mother, Rose remains hurt and broken throughout the rest of the novel, and she is unable to move into a mothering role herself. Interestingly, she decides to leave Thomas after she realizes she is pregnant, indicating Rose’s belief that motherhood can be stifling and could tie her to a partner she does not love.
Unlike Helen, who does not like to drive ever since her husband was killed in an automobile accident, Rose becomes obsessed with driving. Driving is a form of escape for Rose, and she prefers to drive around rather than coming home to spend time with Thomas; this foreshadows her decision to leave the marriage. Driving gives her a sense of agency and freedom that her marriage does not. Helen’s and Rose’s different attitudes to driving reflect their different attitudes to life. Helen is happy in her role as wife and mother; she thrives in the home. In contrast, Rose finds marriage and motherhood suffocating. She craves freedom and constant movement. Despite their deep connection, Rose and Helen are very different people, highlighting how mothers and daughters often want different things from their lives despite their shared histories.
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