Broken Country

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, animal death, substance use, and sexual content.

Beth, her mother, and her sister, Eleanor, sit in the front row of the public gallery as her father takes the stand as a character witness for Frank. Beth notices how much her father has aged, but once he begins speaking, his confidence as a teacher shows. During the initial examination, he provides a glowing reference for Frank, describing how close the Johnson brothers were. When prosecutor Donald Glossop takes over questioning, he asks about Beth’s relationship with Gabriel Wolfe and suggests that Frank harbored jealousy.

Beth reflects that she feels constantly ashamed about the impact that their love triangle—the farmer, his wife, and the famous author—has had on her family. The prosecutor pushes Beth’s father to admit that Frank must have felt jealousy while his wife was having an affair, though her father maintains that if Frank felt jealous, he hid it extremely well. Beth observes that the sensationalized newspaper coverage of their situation doesn’t really matter anymore—nothing does.