Jacob Have I Loved | Setting

Jacob Have I Loved Setting

The novel begins in the late 1930s on Rass Island in the Chesapeake Bay, where thirteen-year-old Louise lives in the town of Rass. As the novel follows Louise into young adulthood, the setting shifts from Rass to the University of Maryland, where Louise briefly attends school, to Truitt, an Appalachian town in West Virginia, where Louise practices midwifery and meets her future husband. The novel spans more than a decade, moving from the pre-World War II era into the 1950s.

Paterson establishes the significance of her Chesapeake Bay setting by opening the book with a preface entitled "Rass Island," a first-person narrative in which Louise evocatively describes the island. Because Paterson's plot develops out of a nostalgic rendering of Louise's adolescence in Rass, the author uses the preface to illustrate her protagonist's attachment to the village that has been home to the Bradshaw family for two hundred years....
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