The setting of The Morning of the Gods is that of Greece during the Colonel's Dictatorship, which lasted from 1967 to 1974. The novel begins when young Greek-American Carla arrives at Athens airport, then travels by bus to a small village below the ancient site of Delphi.

Fenton's descriptions of the houses and the countryside and the setting in general are not stereotypical, but true to reality. The realistic and authentic depictions are confirmed when Carla turns to her uncle and says in a surprised tone that nothing looks like what she expected and that the house does not look like the ones in the poster in her room. It is interesting to see how the setting brings about the sense of a place that the heroine has been to before: "She had entered a new world, a world that seemed more than seven hours in time from New York...