Gypsy Arbutus Leemaster Timeline and Summary

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• At the beginning of the book, Gypsy's Aunt Belle has gone missing and no one knows what's become of her. Her cousin Woodrow is sent to live with his grandparents, who live next door to Gypsy.
• Gypsy goes to meet Woodrow and they become best friends right away. She also learns from her Granny that the reason Belle was estranged from her family was that she initially dated Gypsy's father, Amos. But when Gypsy's beautiful mother Love came around, he fell in love with her instead.
• On Sunday, they go to church and Gypsy introduces Woodrow to all their classmates. He starts telling funny stories and all the kids like him—well, except for Buzz, the class bully who doesn't like that Woodrow is the center of attention.
• Once school starts, Woodrow and Gypsy are in the same class and are super pleased to hang out all the time. They also like going to the movies together.
• One day, Gypsy and Woodrow decide to go see Rear Window in theaters. To Gypsy's dismay, her stepfather Porter says he'll come along. She doesn't like him because she thinks he's taken her dead father's place.
• During the movie, Gypsy starts to feel sick and screams at the character not to look through the window because she'll find something awful. She faints, and Porter carries her home before calling the doctor.
• When Gypsy wakes up again, her mother tells her that she's come down with the measles and has to rest in bed for a while. She keeps slipping in and out of consciousness and having this terrible nightmare about looking through a window to see a dead animal in a pool of blood.
• During Gypsy's convalescence, Woodrow brings Blind Benny to sing at her window. He's a blind man who wanders the town at night and has a beautiful voice; he tells Gypsy that he knew her father well.
• Summer rolls around and Gypsy recovers. She and Woodrow spend a lot of time hanging out and seeing their classmates. They even have a weenie roast by the creek.
• Gypsy's mother hosts her annual garden party and Gypsy and Woodrow are in charge of serving the guests. One of the guests is nasty to Woodrow and talks trash about his mother, so he lies and tells her that he's spiked her drink. Because of this, she starts acting like a drunk fool.
• Instead of punishing him, the whole family thinks that Woodrow's prank is hilarious and Gypsy feels peeved. She feels like people give him more leeway and that she would be punished because she's always supposed to be a good, pretty girl.
• She and Woodrow get into a spat and stop talking for a while. Even when the summer ends and they go back to school, they're still on weird terms… but Gypsy doesn't like it.
• On the first day of school, the teacher asks Gypsy about her father and she says that he died in an accident. Immediately Buzz speaks up to say that she's lying—her father was scarred in a fire and killed himself afterward with a gunshot to the head.
• Gypsy walks home in a daze, remembering how when she was five, she looked through her parents' bedroom window and found her father dead on the ground, lying in a pool of blood.
• When she gets home, she starts hacking off all her hair in a fury. She's mad at her father for committing suicide and no longer wants to honor the promise to never cut her hair.
• Porter finds her and tells her that he doesn't think she's a bad person; he knows she's just wounded. She says that she cut off all her hair because no one sees her for who she is—they only know her as Love's pretty daughter.
• Then Gypsy cries and cries. Later, she learns that Woodrow beat up Buzz and has been suspended from school for fighting. Her mother comes into the room and they finally talk for the first time ever about how Amos committed suicide.
• Woodrow and Gypsy sneak out at night to go wandering with Blind Benny. He reveals to Gypsy that he only has a place to live because her father let him stay in the hardware store that he owned, and even when Amos died, Love told the new owners to give Blind Benny a room. Gypsy's touched by her parents' generosity.
• Gypsy goes to the barbershop that weekend and gets her hair evened out. She decides to call her haircut a Dixie Pixie and pretend that she did it on purpose to be fashionable.
• When she goes to school the next week, her story is so convincing that a bunch of other girls immediately get their hair cut, too.
• On Granny's birthday, the family celebrates and Porter makes a big announcement: He's going to take Woodrow to Baltimore to get his crossed eyes fixed, and they're going to throw a piano recital for Gypsy. She'll finally be recognized for something other than her looks.
• On the one-year anniversary of Belle's disappearance, Woodrow and Gypsy go up to her tree house and watch the sun rise.
• She listens as Woodrow reveals a secret: When Belle went missing she took some of his clothes with her. He's sure that she left town dressed as a boy and is off on an adventure now.
• They both come to the realization that they forgive their parents for leaving them because they know that Belle and Amos were both in so much pain. They can finally be at peace with being left behind.