（外文电子版资料）04 - The War.docVIP

Our story til now... In THE HOUSE, Volume III of the BLACKWATER saga, the Caskey sisters, Miriam and Frances, grow up as virtual strangers to each other. Miriam, spoiled and imperious, lives with her grandmother Mary-Love in the house next door to Frances and their parents, Elinor and Oscar. Frances, her mothers darling, is a timid and fearful child, afraid most of all of the very house in which she lives, and the strange presences she is certain inhabit it. Always sickly, she falls seriously ill after an expedition to the source of her mothers beloved Perdido River, and is confined to her bed for three years, where she is bathed twice daily by Elinor in Perdido water until she recovers. Queenie Strickland, sister-in-law to the widowed James Caskey, peacefully raises her children Lucille, Malcolm and Danjo until her husband Carl returns and resumes his violent attacks. After his almost murderous spree against Queenie and against her own home, Elinor sees to it that Carl meets a grisly end in the Perdido. Elinors mother-in-law, Mary-Love, also meets an untimely end, and though she dies in her bed, she has the curious sensation during her last days that she is being slowly filled and drowned by the waters of the Perdido. After Mary-Loves death, Elinor becomes head of the Caskey family and its considerable fortune, which she will administer more generously and justly than Mary-Love ever did. Perdido, Alabama pop. 1,200 SITE OF LEVEE 1 OSCAR ELINOR CASKEY S HOME 2. MARY-LOVE CASKEYS HOME 3. JAMES CASKEYS HOME 4 DeBORDENAVES HOME 5 TURK S HOME CHAPTER 43 At the Beach Mary-Love had been dead for two years. In the months following the funeral, the Caskeys were watchful for shifts and transformations that were bound to happen in the makeup of the family. Alterations were slow and subtle. Elinor and Oscar and Frances were little changed, although Elinors demeanor seemed easier now that her chief rival and enemy had finally been defeated in death. Fra