Starting off with a poetic epigraph, an unnamed character describes Offerings, a book of poetry penned by Almeda Joynt Roth, and the poet’s local paper the _Vidette _which both passed on gossip and applauded the Roth’s work. The character quotes the book’s preface in which Roth describes her childhood, marred by the death of her two siblings and both her parents. Roth reflects on her poetic practice as both a way to process her grief and occupy her time.

After a brief summation of some of Roth’s poems, all written in verse and most having to do with her childhood, the narrative dips back into biography sourced from the _Vidette _with four-line poems interspersed throughout. Roth lived in her parents’ old house, which faced a respectable street from the front and a dangerous, rowdy neighborhood in the back. The arrival of an industrious widower in the house next to hers prompted much speculation regarding potential courtship, a potentiality to which Almeda Roth was much inclined but the widower, Jarvis Poulter, seemed to show little interest. Roth’s present lack of partnership was attributed to her being a ‘gloomy girl’, still weighed down by her familial tragedy. She marinates privately in the desire to care for Poulter as she once did her father, to go out past the town limits on a countryside drive with him, all the while keeping up with housekeeping, church and other banal duties. On an August evening with grape jelly straining, Roth awakens to commotion on Pearl Street behind her home. Hearing cries of “Kill me!” and “Kill her!” she balks at the thought of murder, debates taking a lamp down the street, but ultimately falls asleep again. She wakes to see a woman’s body pressed against her property and runs to Jarvis Poulter for help. He determines the woman is alive and sends her away without a doctor. Roth feels ill, she can’t stomach the sound of her grape juice plopping, the footsteps outside recall to her walking tombstones. The textures and patterns of her living room seem to be moving, her world is unraveling, she wants to channel all the conflicts and energies and events she’s been exposed to into one masterful poem. The poem, she reflects, is the river _Meneseteung, _embodying its floods, eddies and swells. The next entry in the _Vidette _is Almeda Roth’s obituary, having been chased into a bog by the Pearl Street children and caught pneumonia. Her poetry is praised and her descent into madness is lamented. Hers is followed by the obituary for Jarvis Poulter. Our guiding character visits the Roth gravesite, finding first her parents and siblings and after rooting around in the dirt, finding Almeda’s as well.