Chapter 1 Summary

Annie Metcalf and her mother, Katherine, drive from their Kansas City home to the train station to meet Annie's father, Larry, who is returning from New York City. Larry has served as a physician treating American soldiers wounded in World War I. Annie's father has been gone for a year and a half; and although Annie knows that her father did not engage in any battles, she is still apprehensive about seeing him again and hopes that the war did not change him too much.

When the troop train arrives, Annie is horror stricken by the wounded men and their vacant stares, as they are wheeled to waiting ambulances that will take them to St. John's Veterans Hospital. Annie thinks about her Uncle Paul, who was killed in the war, and wishes that he could be one of the men arriving at the...