A Northern Light Chapter 3 Summary

Still in the Flashback, before she works at the Glenmore, the story takes place with Mattie, Minnie, and Weaver (her 2 best friends) picking fiddleheads for money. As they pick the fiddleheads they have a duel with words of who can come up with the most amount of synonyms for a random word. Minnie apparently is fat and is ordered by the doctor to excercise so the two do not let her off the hook at any instance. The reader learns more about Mattie's 'trip' to New York (a $6.90 trip). She is a writer and a couple months back Weaver had taken a composition notebook that Mattie threw into the woods and showed it to Mrs. Wilcox who sent it to New York and recognized her talent.

We also hear about Weaver. His father was shot when his family lived in Mississippi for not moving out of the sidewalk by 3 white men. His mom washed clothes for a living and raised chickens. During the warmer months she would fry up 4-5 and make biscuits and sell it to all of the hungry people on the trains, and would sell out. All of the money went to Weaver's college fund, to Columbia University, New York. He was the first freeborn boy in his family.

The kids sat and read a book, and Weaver brought up a promise, implied that Mattie made to her mother on her deathbed. He said that she took away her life (by dying) but she didn't have to take away MAttie's as well. I assumed that she promised her mother that she would take care of her father and siblings and assume her role as the woman of the household. This angers Mattie for bringing up the subject, and she gets defensive. Finally Weaver figures out a way to lighten the mood: a word draw.