Part III opens some distance from Whit’s low point, stranded in the Minneapolis airport and utterly directionless. And thank God we don’t have to walk through those intervening years with him, since we can only imagine the flailing and false starts it took to dig himself out of the depression and get to a place of semi-self-respect.

When we see Whit again, though, he’s done it. He has landed a job as a Spanish instructor at a community college in Wilmer, Minnesota, and reunited with Isaias. The two continue to build on their easy friendship as though they’d never been apart, with Isaias continuing to challenge and guide Whit in his knowledge of the world.

The past is still trailing, however. In a birthday conversation with Libby, he begins to admit to himself the abuses he know she endured at the hands of Bonner Hansen while their father turned away from her pain. As he wrestles with that awareness, he loses his job at the college because of inadequate credentials. He and Isaias determine to move south to be with Libby in Northeast Arkansas.

Fate or Providence or whatever other benevolent forces might be at play instead dump them 60 miles north, just barely in Missouri, where Whit takes a job as a mechanics and Spanish instructor. There he meets the great love of his life, November Burqvist, a half-Cherokee firebrand with whom he shares a full and intimate life.

A surprise visit from Cole Allen and Bonner changes all that, however. The two men show up on their way back to Wyoming, where they intend to plant a fundamentalist church among the employees of a newly reopened coal mine. Whit can see at a glance how deep the rift between him and his father has become, and yet he can’t manage to keep that friction from bleeding into his relationship with Novie. After the two men leave, Whit and Novie square off in a spectacular fight that, best he can tell, ends their relationship. On the heels of the breakup, Isaias announces that he is moving to take another job, leaving Whit dejected and alone.

And so, with nothing more to lose, Whit makes a desperation play. He returns to Trujillo, thinking he will adopt Yesenia, a girl from Operación Amor who had suggested as much to him when he worked at the facility. But the trip is a disaster, doomed by old scores and misunderstandings. Yesenia has aged out of the program and is nowhere to be found. Father Guillermo has left the priesthood and now manages a closet gay bar at the beach. And Mila’s husband and his henchmen continue to lurk in the shadows, threatening any moment to teach Whit a lesson in good intentions.

At last, Whit returns home, trailing failure with every step. A powerful spring storm forces him to stop at his sister’s house on the drive home. Their little brother Zeb lives with her and her boyfriend most of the time now, and through his kindness accidentally reveals the bruises Libby did not want Whit to see. He knows Franklin is hurting her and that he will eventually hurt Zeb, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. When the roads reopen, he drives northward, hoping against hope to reconcile with Novie and pull his life back together.