Summary

The first chapter in section one acts as a prologue for the novel. The narrator, 14-year-old Pearl, opens the novel by telling the reader about her mother, Margot. Pearl said that her mother was a sweet and caring woman, but that left her vulnerable to attracting the wrong sort of man. Pearl said that her mother met a bad man named Eli and that she fell for him immediately.

In the next chapter, Pearl tells us that she grew up living inside of a car parked in a trailer park. There were only four occupied trailers in the park. They belonged to Pastor Rex, a young couple (Corazon and Ray), Roberta and her adult daughter Noelle, and Rose and Sergeant Bob, the parents of April May, Pearl’s only friend. The trailer park was right next to a creek and the town dump...