It’s so normal for Asia to dream for John instead of herself that she doesn’t even notice doing it. A book about Father doesn’t strike her as a big dream. But John, of course, John will be extraordinary.

They return home, contented, logy with sun, water, horse, and dreams. To her surprise, Asia sees smoke coming from the chimney. She points this out to John. The day is so hot. It makes no sense.

They send the horses to the stable and go inside. There they find Mother, red and sweating in the sweltering room. She’s pulled her chair next to the fireplace. Father’s trunks are open, the bundles of letters piled about Mother’s black skirts. She is reading every letter. And then, when she finishes, Mother is feeding every letter into the fire.

vi

Nothing Asia or John can say stops the slaughter. Asia pleads, she shouts. She sobs in her fury and her disappointment. There, literally up in smoke, goes her chance to be someone more than what she is. “Leave us something,” she begs and so Mother begins to tear off the signatures—Tom Flynn, Robert Elliston, the famous blackface performer Daddy Rice—and hand these to Asia prior to burning the letters to which they were attached. The only thing these signatures offer is the certainty that a fascinating wealth of information is now ash. “I will never forgive you,” Asia tells Mother and she means it as only Asia can. She has an unforgiving heart, Shylock’s heart, John once told her, and she wishes it weren’t true, but knows that it is. She may let go, she may move past, but she never will forgive.

For several days, the only person she talks to is John. If Mother enters a room, Asia immediately quits it. John is less devastated—he has other dreams to sustain him—but equally angry. “It was a kind of murder,” John says, which is exactly what Asia also thinks. “A homicidal mania.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mother says eventually. “I can tell you anything you need to know for your little book,” but Asia has already made a different plan. She writes to those friends of Father’s she knows well, asking them to send her what they remember, along with any playbills and reviews they might have kept. It occurs to her that Father’s sister may have had her own letters and memorabilia. Aunt Jane has recently died, but Uncle Mitchell is still in Baltimore, cast off by his children and living a grasping existence in a squalid garret. Asia decides she would rather talk to her drunken, miserly, contemptible uncle than to her mother.

It is now 1854. June is prospering in San Francisco. He and Hattie have had a baby girl. Her name is Marion Rosalie Edwina Booth.

Edwin is booked for a fall tour to Australia and Hawaii arranged by the British actress and manager Laura Keene. His letters are full of excitement and plans. “I will make a fortune,” he promises, “and then I will lose it all before I return.”