Jayber Crow

Twelve years have passed, and the narrator says he will condense the details to get to the most important part of his story: how he came to love Mattie. After Aunt Cordie dies, there is no one to care for Jonah, so he is sent to an orphanage called The Good Shepherd and run by Brother Whitespade. Brother Whitespade changes Jonah’s name to J. The orphanage building is a nice place, but Brother Whitespade is authoritarian and cold. J. learns to live by the strict rules of the orphanage and develops a rich imagination as a means of escape from his sadness. J. is smart but struggles to pay attention in class. He does love to read and spends a lot of his free time in the library. J. is inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Walden and dreams of building his cabin in the woods one day. J. often returns to his home in Squires Landing in his memories as a source of comfort: “I was being preserved by the forces of charity in an institution, and at the same time I was preserving in myself a country and a life, steadfastly remembered” (54). One day a girl called E.