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Helen
Danny Olmsted is a low-level academic at LSU, whose vague and seemingly unending historical “research” grants him privileged access to the Belle Vie grounds. Caren suspects him of abusing these privileges, but it turns out that he has done real research that covered Jason’s disappearance and also helps Donovan script his revisionist movie.
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Danny Olmsted Character Timeline in The Cutting Season
The timeline below shows where the character Danny Olmsted appears in The Cutting Season. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...grisly scene, but Caren tries to maintain business as usual and tells them to disperse. Danny Olmsted arrives, a bumbling adjunct history professor who has been taking advantage of Belle Vie’s...
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Chapter 5
...house, she notices that the spare key is missing from its drawer. She thinks of Danny, the adjunct professor who has key access to the property, which makes her uncomfortable. She...
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...any of them have heard anything from or about Donovan, and everyone keeps suspiciously quiet. Danny claims that he’s not returning their calls. Danny is acting extremely nervous, biting his thumb....
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Chapter 9
The atmosphere is tense, and Danny in particular seems reticent. Caren thinks about the divide between the staff and herself. The...
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Chapter 11
...Ms. Rivera gave her that Morgan had been reading and is surprised to see it’s Danny’s dissertation. Even more surprising, the paper appears to deal with the investigation surrounding her ancestor...
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Chapter 16
...mentions both Jason and Aaron Nathan Sweats, the Black sheriff whose name she’d encountered in Danny’s dissertation. She suspects Danny’s help on this manuscript and set off to find him.
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In the kitchen, Lorraine tells Caren that Danny’s not around on Saturdays. Caren confronts her with Donovan’s script, and Lorraine reveals that all...
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Chapter 18
...the archives, which she’d never looked at before. They’re surprisingly disorganized, and she wonders if Danny has been pilfering them. She finds bills of land ownership and records of slave names,...
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Chapter 22
Caren takes the map to Danny in his office at LSU. He’s surprised to see her, and even more so when...
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