Summary

The prelude of the novel takes place in Baltimore, Maryland, on a hot August night in 1930. The narrator imagines a white room where a woman named Christine is giving birth. This is the place where the "catastrophic unraveling" (6) began in the narrator's mind. The woman eventually gives birth to a baby girl, but the child does not survive. Outside of the room, the physician breaks the news to Christine's father. He tells him that Christine should not try to give birth again, and her father is devastated. Christine is his only child, and he will have no one to carry on the family name. The prelude ends as the physician mysteriously whispers to Christine's father about a woman in Memphis.

Chapter 1 takes place in the present day in Aiken, South Carolina. This chapter is told from Avery Stafford's perspective. Avery is in...