The Foxing

Ruth Okafor begins her day in the Conservation Division of the Library of Congress, where a new collection of Civil War letters arrives for examination.

Ruth continues her examination of the Grayson letters, discovering hidden text and deeper damage. Her colleague James shares news of his Gutenberg fragment.

Ruth visits her father David in Silver Spring. The conversation circles around her mother without ever arriving.

Ruth begins drafting the treatment proposal for the Grayson letters. A conversation with her supervisor raises questions about what conservation truly preserves.

Ruth examines the foxing on the Grayson letters and confronts the central mystery of her profession: the uncertain cause of visible deterioration.

Ruth begins treating the most damaged Grayson letters. A chance encounter at the Library leads her to consider seeking a translator for her mother's Igbo letters.

Ruth rehouses her mother's letters in archival materials. James provides the name of an Igbo linguist at Howard University. Volume 1 closes with Ruth making a phone call.

Ruth walks the stacks during a routine environmental monitoring round, reading the building the way she reads paper, while a climate system failure threatens a vulnerable collection.

Dr. Nneka Azikiwe returns Ruth's call. They arrange a meeting. Ruth begins the washing treatment on the Grayson letters and thinks about what it means to immerse something fragile in a solution that will change it.

Ruth mends a torn Grayson letter with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. Dr. Azikiwe delivers the first batch of translations, and Ruth reads her mother's words about loneliness, distance, and the garden in Silver Spring.

Ruth reads the fifth translation — a letter her mother wrote to a woman Ruth never knew. She visits her father again and asks about the name in the letter. The past becomes translucent.

Ruth begins treating her mother's letters at home. She stabilizes the iron gall ink with calcium phytate. Dr. Azikiwe delivers the second batch of translations, revealing Adaeze's thoughts on memory, preservation, and forgetting.

Ruth deacidifies her mother's letters in her kitchen. She reads translations that reveal Adaeze's thoughts on the distance between English and Igbo, and the particular loneliness of thinking in a language no one around you speaks.

Ruth lines the most damaged of her mother's letters with Japanese tissue. Dr. Azikiwe reads a letter aloud in Igbo, and Ruth hears her mother's language as she has never heard it before — as a living thing, spoken by a living voice.

Ruth confronts the losses in her mother's letters — the places where the ink has consumed the paper and the words are gone. She visits her father and tells him about the translations. A conversation about what can and cannot be recovered.

Ruth brings the translations to her father. David reads his wife's words and speaks about the marriage, the silences, the languages between them. Ruth's Igbo lessons begin. The treatment of both collections — the Grayson letters and the Okafor letters — reaches its midpoint.

Ruth completes the Grayson collection treatment. She prepares the final housing for the Civil War letters and begins to think about the permanent housing of her mother's letters. Dr. Azikiwe finishes the translations.

Ruth reads the full translation of her mother's letter to her — the 2000 letter, the last in the collection. Adaeze writes about paper, about preservation, about the things we leave behind for the people who will come after us.

Ruth brings the translations to her father for the second time. David reads the letter Adaeze wrote to Ruth, and a conversation opens between father and daughter that has been closed for decades. Ruth begins to understand her parents' marriage from both sides.

Ruth creates a complete catalogue of her mother's letters — condition, treatment, content. She visits Nneka for the final Igbo lesson in the first course and reads a full letter aloud without assistance. The professional and the personal merge.

The Grayson letters go on exhibition at the Library. Ruth walks through the gallery and sees her professional work displayed for the public. She brings Nneka and her father to the opening. A conversation about what it means to make private documents public.

Ruth returns to the question of foxing — its cause, its meaning, its persistence. She writes a letter to her mother in Igbo. She returns to the light table with new eyes.

Ruth makes the decision about the permanent housing of her mother's letters. She visits her father one final time in this story. She returns to the light table. The novel closes as it opened — with a document on the glass, and a conservator examining what can be preserved.