Empty hands

Abstract

At the center of 'Empty Hands' Ruth, abandoned mother of two, works through World War II as a spinner in an eastern North Carolina cloth mill. She struggles to raise two daughters, one six, and one seventeen, pregnant and unmarried. As a result of the town's ostracism, Ruth seeks new community with Sophie, another woman living outside of the town's boundaries and favor. The story emerges through multiple points of view including those of the four women and also those of Jinson Toole, a black tobacco farmer, and Harlin Lowe, a white citified outsider. Structurally, the novel is bracketed by fires that occur on the same night and serve to evoke the town's character and its relations with those on the outskirts of community. Themes are woven throughout that move each of the novel's primary characters: the absence of knowing, the presence of emptiness, the reality of empty hands.