How It All Goes Down
Other Voices, Other Rooms is divided into three parts. The first part is the longest one, and tells us how Joel Harrison Knox, a thirteen-year-old boy, comes to live in Skully's Landing. He's from New Orleans, but after his mother dies his father sends for him to live in this strange old house outside of a tiny town called Noon City. In town, Joel meets a tomboy called Idabel Thompkins, and ends up giving her and her twin sister, Florabel, a lift.
Once he arrives at Skully's Landing things get really weird. He wakes up the next morning to a woman killing a blue jay in his bedroom. She turns out to be his stepmother, Miss Amy. He also meets the cook, Zoo, and Amy's cousin Randolph, but no one will answer any questions about his father.
On his first day exploring the grounds Joel looks up at the house windows and sees a strange lady looking at him. No one will confirm whether she's real or not. Still no news on Joel's dad, either. Zoo introduces Joel to a hermit named Little Sunshine, who lives in an abandoned hotel by a pond where several people have drowned. Nice, right? Joel ends up becoming best buddies with Idabel. One day he kisses her on the cheek, and they get into a fight but make up.
Joel finally gets to meet his father who, it is turned out, is completely paralyzed and communicates by dropping red tennis balls out of his bed. They roll down the stairs to alert Amy and Randolph when he needs anything. Joel reads to and feeds his father, and one day Randolph tells him that he shot his dad, and then Amy came and married him and took him back to the Landing with her. So basically Joel's dad is a paralyzed prisoner and Amy and Randolph have sent for Joel under false pretenses.
Joel and Idabel decide to run away, and they go to the fair. They meet a small woman named Miss Wisteria at the freak show and Idabel falls in love with her. Miss Wisteria has her eye on Joel though, and a rainstorm is the only thing that saves him the little sexual predator. After the storm Joel is sick for several weeks. When he comes out of his fever he finds out that Idabel has run away or been sent away (it's hard to know).
Randolph tells Joel that Little Sunshine wants them to come to the hotel to see him. When they get there, it's clear Little Sunshine was not expecting them, so Joel knows Randolph was lying. They pass an awful night with Randolph and Little Sunshine getting stone drunk, and their mule dies by hanging itself from the hotel's stair rail (no, really!) so they have to walk home. When they get back Joel finds out he was sent away because his aunt came to visit—his last hope to be saved.
The strange lady appears in Randolph's window, beckoning Joel, and he goes to her, leaving his old self behind.