45 pages • 1 hour read
In the Midst of Winter
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
It has been several months since Lucia, a sixty-two-year-old woman from Santiago, Chile, has come to the U.S. to teach at New York University as a visiting professor in the Latin and Caribbean Studies department. She lives in a basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York that belongs to her boss, another academic in her department named Richard Bowmaster.
When a severe snowstorm hits New York City, Lucia feels lonely and trapped inside her basement apartment. She calls Richard to tell him that she is “scared” (4) of the storm, but he dismisses her worries. When she invites him to keep her company, he seems reluctant. She bids him goodnight. When they hang up, she thinks about how she had imagined that their relationship might turn romantic given that they kept correspondence for many years. Richard’s coldness makes it seem as if he is disinterested. This reminds Lucia of her relationships following her divorce, especially one named Julian whom she had broken up with because he could not commit to her. She thinks about her daughter Daniela, who advises her to date freely.
As Daniela is in love and studying marine biology in Miami, Lucia knows that her daughter will likely stay in the U.S.. Lucia does not know where she will go after her visiting professorship at New York University is over in one year.
Chapter 2 Summary
After Lucia’s call, Richard wonders why he was so cold in response to her request for his company. He thinks about how he has tried to keep a stoic and emotionally removed life since his passionate relationship with his former wife, Anita. Since then, he has not been romantically attached to anyone.
Living alone, he is accustomed to his solitude. His only house companions are his four cats. He convinces himself that his obligation to them are to feed and look after them, offering only minor affection. However, on the day after the snowstorm, one of his cats ingests the antifreeze that he has accidentally let leak under the sink. The cat becomes severely ill and needs emergency care. Richard bundles the sick cat in a blanket and rushes him to the veterinary hospital. After the cat’s checkup, he overhears one veterinarian telling another that the cat is sick due to Richard’s “negligence” (20). He is told that there is nothing he can do and that the prognosis is not positive; the cat must stay behind at the hospital and await possible death. When Richard pays the deposit for the hospital bill, he becomes surprisingly emotional.
Driving home, Richard is distracted by his sadness as well as the poor weather. When he accidentally brushes his glasses off his face, he crashes into the car in front of him. He accepts responsibility for the damage to the car and tries to exchange insurance information with the driver, who turns out to be a young woman. The woman does not look at him and drives away, hitting him with her car door.
Chapter 3 Summary
Richard returns home, stunned from the veterinary hospital visit and hitting another woman’s car. Several hours later, the woman he rear-ended appears at his door. He tries to speak with her, but she seems in shock and does not answer. Richard calls Lucia to his home to have her speak with the woman since Lucia knows Spanish better than he does. Lucia, still bitter about Richard’s coldness, is reluctant at first but eventually relents.
When Lucia starts speaking to the woman, she learns that her name is Evelyn Ortega and that she is from Guatemala. Evelyn has taken her car from her employers, Frank and Cheryl Leroy, while they are out of town. She is a full-time caretaker for the Leroys’ child. By Evelyn’s descriptions of her employment and her fear of her employers, Lucia and Richard assess that her situation may be one of “forced labor or slavery” (34). Evelyn is worried that her employment status would be threatened due to the damage to her employers’ car. Lucia tells Richard that Evelyn should spend the night at his place and that they should help her get the car fixed the next day using Richard’s insurance. While this may not protect Evelyn from her employers’ rage, Lucia informs Richard that this is the best they can do at the moment. Richard offers his guests some marijuana infused brownies to help calm the nerves in the room.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In these first three chapters of the novel, we are introduced to Lucia, Richard, and Evelyn: three main protagonists whose struggles are marked by geopolitical and psychological borders. While Lucia’s sense of isolation extends from her feeling of estrangement in Chile to her loneliness in New York City, Richard is bound to living an emotionally removed life. This is exemplified through the housing setup of Richard and Lucia’s living spaces, where the former occupies a large brownstone alone, rebuffing Lucia’s company in the basement despite the worsening snowstorm. There is an emotional barrier in both of their lives, though Lucia’s struggle also possesses a cultural weight that Richard does not comprehend. However, Lucia’s proximity to cultural difference makes her a suitable translator for Evelyn whose struggles come from migrating through geopolitical borders as an undocumented minor.
While their lives would not ordinarily intersect, the weather has blurred the borders that existentially exist between Lucia, Richard, and Evelyn. Describing the snowstorm as “white on white” (20), there is an erosion of borders between people and places when Richard drives home from the veterinary hospital. As the car that Evelyn is driving is white too, there is further lack of distinct borders, compelling the two to crash in the blurred vision of the storm. The crash as well as the blurred borders of the environment are symbolic of the ways in which their lives become intertwined.
The second chapter also introduces a trigger word for Richard, which is the reference to his “negligence.” While the novel does not reveal yet the exact nature of his traumatic past that has contributed to his conservative living, the veterinarian’s use of the term suggests that his past actions may have included reckless behavior. It is later revealed that his negligence from alcoholism contributed to the death of his child Bibi and the mental suffering and eventual suicide of his wife, Anita.
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