The Story She Left Behind

Bronwyn’s leather satchel is symbolic of the past. The satchel “contains the words she’s spent her life finding and creating” (2). It is one of the few things that Bronwyn carries with her when she flees Bluffton at the start of the novel. Her attachment to the satchel conveys her attachment to her life’s work—an inventive linguistic project that she began years prior when she was just a girl. Throughout the years that follow Bronwyn’s disappearance, Clara is convinced that the satchel is lost forever. It disappeared with her mother 25 years prior and is as lost as Bronwyn herself. The same is true of the past: it is an irretrievable realm that Clara often visits in her mind but feels incapable of fully accessing and understanding.

When the satchel resurfaces in Clara’s life, reminders of her past resurface with it, further cementing The Impact of the Past on the Present. The satchel physically resembles a relic: “worn and scratched, its brass buckles tarnished” (12). It represents the mysterious life that Bronwyn lived and the work she completed. Retrieving the satchel from Clara offers the hope of recovering Bronwyn herself—or, at the very least, her memory. Therefore, when the satchel is later stolen, Clara feels that she has lost her grasp on the past once more.