The Ponder Heart is the story of a man who has such a large heart he is willing to help anyone and give away anything he has without thought to what is in it for him. He is a rare man who only wants to make others happy. Daniel Ponder is viewed as being more of a child than an adult even at his advanced age. His father tries to have him institutionalized because he cannot always keep track of him or keep him from giving away the family’s belongings.
Edna Earle is Daniel’s niece and helps look after her Uncle Daniel. He gave her the hotel that she manages so she is one of the recipients of his kind heart. When her grandfather dies, she tries to help Uncle Daniel as much as she can. Since he married right before his father’s death, she cannot have as much influence as she has had in the past.
Daniel chooses a young girl of seventeen for his wife. Bonnie Dee Peacock likes Daniel’s money rather than the man. She marries him on trial. When she does not like the arrangement of her marriage, she leaves. Since she married him on trial, this is her right. Daniel becomes very distraught when Bonnie Dee leaves. Edna Earle cannot take the way he pines after the girl, so she puts an advertisement in the paper for Bonnie Dee to return.
When Bonnie Dee returns, she takes over the Ponder house. She throws out Uncle Daniel and lives in the large house with Narciss, the woman who cooks and cleans for the Ponders. Uncle Daniel moves into the hotel with Edna Earle. He is happy with this arrangement. He loves being around people and the hotel and the town provide him a great audience for his stories.
In his absence, Bonnie Dee makes the house her own. She buys lots of dresses, installs a telephone and even has electricity wired to the house. Grandfather Ponder was against electricity and would never have it installed. Uncle Daniel gives Bonnie Dee an allowance every Saturday. Edna Earle convinces him to not pay her one Saturday to see what will happen. On the following Monday, Daniel is summoned by Bonnie Dee to the Ponder house. Bonnie Dee dies on the same day.
A lawyer, Dorris R. Gladney, convinces the Peacocks that Uncle Daniel was responsible for Bonnie Dee’s death and a trial is convened. DeYancey Clanahan is Uncle Daniel’s lawyer. He and Edna Earle convince Daniel that he should not testify at his trial and should not speak in the courtroom. The people want to know how a girl of seventeen can suddenly die. Edna Earle tells a story of how lightening got into the house and the girl died of fright. She attempts to suppress the real story to help her Uncle Daniel. The young girl was scared by the powerful storm that passed the area on the Monday that she summoned Daniel to the Ponder home. She presses her face into a pillow to drown out the storm and her screams. Daniel attempts to ease Bonnie Dee’s distress by tinkling her. During this she falls off the sofa and Edna Earle thinks she is playing dead to stop the tinkling, but she is not faking. The doctor pronounces her dead.
Uncle Daniel demands that he be able to speak his peace in his own defense. During his testimony, he rises from his seat and goes around the courthouse handing money to people. That morning he had gone to the bank and a young girl working there did not know that she should not give him the money that he requested. Uncle Daniel had his whole fortune stuffed in his pockets. He gave it away to the people in the courthouse.
Uncle Daniel is pronounced innocent of Bonnie Dee’s death, but his life if not the same. The people of the town no longer flock to hear his stories because they know that he no longer has anything that he can give them. They were happy to sit and listen to the man when he could at any moment offer them something of value but did not have the time for him when he had nothing to give. His kind heart did not mean as much to the people as his fortune.
