Chapter 1 Summary

The chapter begins with a clipping from a local newspaper, announcing the murder of Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner. The clipping also reveals that the houseboy (whose name is later revealed to be Moses) has been arrested and charged with the crime. Later narration reveals that the Turners are white and Moses is black.

The chapter proper begins with a brief account of how members of the white community in which the Turners lived reacted to news of the murder—with surprise but without shock and without grief, since the Turners were generally disliked because they lived their lives separate from the rest of the (minority) white community. Narration recounts how several questions were asked in the community in the wake of the murder. Why, for example, did one of the Turners' farm-boys run to a neighbor, Charlie Slatter, instead of...