Summary

An unknown first-person narrator follows the railroad tracks north. The narrator in Section I remembers home and thinks of the "causes and consequences" that lead him on this journey (3). A fire decimates the narrator's former home in Elmet, and he remembers "the sister with blood on her skin and that land put to waste" (1). The narrator speaks of breaking old bonds and alludes to a missing sister that will never be found (2). In Chapter One, Daniel narrates his memories of the summer when his family first arrives in a lorry to their new home in the woods. Once they settle, Daddy builds a house and creates furniture from the materials of the woods, and Daniel plants a garden with local seeds and bulbs, including pansies, daffodils, and roses. They make their house their own, "pinning it to the seasons, to the months and...