Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Exposition: Howard (1916)
Road Trip
The first chapter sets up the frame story—you know, the one narrated by Howard Leland Hutchings that opens and closes the book. Howard, his dad, and his 5-year-old twin brothers travel from St. Louis to Grand Tower to visit his dad's side of the family, whom the boys have never met. When they get there, they find four really old people in a really old house, which sounds like the start of a nursery rhyme, but we get a Civil War story instead.
Exposition: Tilly (1861)
April Is the Cruelest Month
The second chapter brings us to the main story, which is narrated by Tilly Pruitt, aka Grandma Tilly, in 1916. Because we're in a new story, we get new exposition. We go back to the Civil War era, where we're introduced to the Pruitt family, including 15-year-old twins Tilly and Noah, 12-year-old Cass (who has disturbing visions), and Mama. Paw is who-knows-where, allegedly working on the river.
Importantly, the Civil War has started at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and President Lincoln's blockade of the Southern states is expected to slow traffic on the river. Meanwhile, many local boys are drilling with militias for one side or the other.
Rising Action
That Old Man River
Midway through Chapter 3, things start to pick up. Delphine and Calinda show up and turn the Pruitt family's lives upside down. Meanwhile, Noah intends to join the army, and Cass has terrible visions. The rising action continues through Chapter 11 as Noah leaves and Mama sends Delphine and Tilly to somehow bring home her beloved son. At the end of Chapter 11, Tilly tells us the attack they've been waiting for arrives, and with that, we know we're heading for the climax.
Climax
It's Not What You Think
In books that circle around war, war often factors into the climax in a pretty major way. It's just how war rolls, you know? But not so in this book. Instead, Delphine takes center stage, and the climax is the big reveal of the secret she's been hiding: she's a free person of color from New Orleans, and Calinda is her darker-skinned sister—so they're not a white girl and her slave, like everyone's been thinking. The climax, then, is the revelation that while everyone's been looking at the war, Delphine and Calinda have been keeping a giant secret right under their noses.
Falling Action
Only the Good … Lose Their Arms
Now that Delphine's big secret has been revealed, Noah's participation in the Battle of Belmont and subsequent loss of his arm comes across as—dare we say it?—kind of anticlimactic. Chapters 13 and 14 are concerned with Tilly and Delphine's efforts to get Noah home and their discovery of Paw's death on the Confederate side as well as Mama's suicide. For falling action, this definitely feels a bit more like falling apart. But so it goes sometimes as plots settle down.
Resolution
And Then They All Got Old
The resolution of both the main story and the frame story occurs in Chapter 15. Tilly finishes her story, wrapping up the loose ends and explaining what happened to each of the characters. And then, after Howard and his family get back on the road, his dad reveals the final twist—the true identity of his parents—and Howard looks ahead toward the coming war.