How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Inside the store there were a lot of counters, with sales ladies behind some of them and a lot of female customers looking over the goods. They all seemed to be talking to each other, their voices high-pitched and excited, kind of like chicken voices in a yard, when one hen or another had scratched up something special. Tom felt a kind of wildness in his eye as he looked around. There wasn't another man or boy in the whole store. (11.5)
This is Tom's first time going into a store in town to buy gifts, and he picked quite the place to start. Not only is going into the store a new experience, but Tom also finds himself to be the only guy in sight. Sure, he's used to interacting mostly with his mom and younger sisters, but this is a whole new chicken coop. And see what the author did here: by making Tom think of the ladies in barnyard terms, we get yet another reminder of how uncomfortable he is here and what a country lad he is at heart.
Quote #2
[The road to the Dolans' property] ran narrow, through close-grown spruce to begin with, with sharp curves, but the minute he came under the trees he felt at home. He didn't need to see to find his way. […] Now it was easier, for the snow made the road white under the dark spruces, as black as sorrow Birdy had once said of them. There was no wind, not even the sound of it, and the snow that came to ground dropped as light as flour sifted through a sieve. (13.13)
Tom's lives a few miles outside of town and he knows the countryside well. If you want proof, it's right here in his ability to find his way home in a blinding snowstorm at night. That's a built-in GPS, right there. Beyond that, Tom's countryside is described poetically, with a mix of sadness and beauty: there's that simile describing the road "as black as sorrow" and then another depicting the snow falling like flour through a sieve. The novel is full of these kinds of complex descriptions of the countryside, and the text lets nature be many things—not all good or all bad.
Quote #3
[…] Tom realized, though he had never noticed before, that there were telephone lines at the top of the hill with a pole there serving the depot. Meanwhile a couple of more men came into the office one of them carrying the telephone itself. (16.1)
Pick up your smartphone and do a search for what telephones looked like 100 years ago. Here's a hint: you couldn't search for anything on them at that point. But to Tom, this was cutting-edge technology. History nugget: the first telephone lines actually were installed in Boonville in 1900. Yup, that's right around the time when the novel is set.
Quote #4
"Old Broken-Crow Redner made them," he said. "Made good snowshoes all his life. I come on them in a dinky little crossroads store over back of Gray." (18.22)
Birdy only mentions Old Broken-Crow Redner in passing, but details like this show how interested the novel is in capturing the region's diverse influences. "Old Broken-Crow" sounds like a Native American name, so the casual name-drop nods to another presence in the area—one that's notably absent from the rest of the book. Heads up if you ever have to do a big project on Edmonds: some of his other books deal with Native Americans more extensively, but they've been criticized for giving only stereotypical representations.
Quote #5
The Hulbert House was the biggest hotel in Boonville, where political visitors or sportsmen on their way into the woods put up. It had always looked very impressive to Tom, with its walls of gray limestone and a six-pillared portico, three stories high, with fancy railed balconies between them at the second and third floors. (23.4)
The Hulbert House is another place in town that Tom enters for the first time in the book. For a boy from a shabby home with a barn not "much more than a shack" (2.7), the expensive hotel is a pretty stark contrast. The difference highlights that even though there are only a few miles between town and the countryside, there are worlds of difference in some of the lifestyles.
Quote #6
"No idea what he paid for it. It's not worth anything, so he paid too much, that's sure. You get to be a lawyer in New York City and what you spend up in this country don't mean anything to you." (33.4)
We've been told time and again that the Breen property is no good for farming, but Mr. Armond buys it anyway. Why? Because the land is adjacent to his own property, so why not? Mr. Armond can afford to do something like that because he's a fancy lawyer from the city. When Mr. Armond arrives at his property every spring, he comes with an entourage of domestic staff, fine clothes, and all the latest models of wagons. It's a way different lifestyle than Tom's humble country upbringing—and even puts life in town to shame.
Quote #7
"The loggeurs will be coming back into the woods. They stop over Sunday in Forestport."
Tom was puzzled. "Logguers?" he asked.
Bancel said with some score, "My brother has not learned English too good, even yet. He means the lumberjacks." (44.6-8)
Bancel Moucheaud and his brother Louis are French-Canadian, and their presence in the book, like mention of Irish settlers and Native Americans, adds to the picture of cultural diversity in the area. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many French Canadians immigrated to the US, often settling in states near the Canadian border and getting jobs as farmhands, lumberjacks, or millworkers.
Quote #8
They were passing through the Irish Settlement. There were no lights at all now, except their own traveling the edge of the road as Drew pulled the wagon in a steady trot. Once a door opened—they could hear the hinge squeak—but whoever looked out didn't have anything to say. Then they were rolling down the steep hill and five minutes later passing through Forestport.
There were lights in the saloons and Utley's harness shop, but the rest of the buildings were dark. Tom caught sight of a wall clock through the saloon window; he thought it said half past eleven.
"It'll be way past midnight when we get to Boonville," he said. (51.28-30)
Polly Ann and Tom's late-night treasure hunt gives one of the best impressions of all the varied kinds of people, places, and natural features sprawled through the region. In their journey, they pass lots of things: impoverished Irish families' shanties, saloons, roads to other towns, a church where a clergyman is consoling a woman, a shop with three old men sitting in front of a stove, and plenty of nature. Whew. All that traveling really drives home that establishing the sense of place in the area is very important, and Edmonds does it thoroughly.
Quote #9
Inside the walnut doors with their long glass panels Tom found himself in a place like nothing he had seen before. A counter ran all down one wall but it wasn't like any counter in a store. It had a wall with sort of windows in it, only they had gratings over them like prison windows. Three of them there were, each one with a man behind it. Two said "Teller" across the top of the gratings; the third one had the word "Cashier." Tom couldn't see any real difference in the men behind them, though. They had palish faces and the hands that kept coming out through the bottom of the gratings were pale too. It wasn't the kind of place he could feel easy in […] (53.3)
Like Tom's first experience shopping in a retail store, his first time going into the bank is disorienting and uncomfortable. This quote comes much later in the book than the shopping scene, but the fact that he doesn't feel "easy" shows how much his new experiences in town have an impact on him throughout the the book.
Quote #10
They took the morning southbound train. Tom hadn't been on the railroad before. He sat beside the window at Mr. Hook's suggestion. (61.1)
The train isn't new in the area like the telephones are, but it's another bit of technology that Tom has never had access to before going to work in town. BTW, some things never change. Even back then, the window seat was cooler.