Summary

At the beginning of the first chapter of the novel, a young boy named Henry Forge is running through his family’s corn fields on the farm they have held for generations in Paris, Kentucky. It is some time in the 1950s. Henry’s movements through the corn fields are discovered by the family’s black servant, Filip Dunbar, who takes Henry back to the house in the center of the farm. There, Henry’s father, John Henry, ties him to a whipping post and whips him savagely as part of Henry’s punishment for lighting a firecracker underneath a neighbor’s cattle, which had killed it. Later, laying in his bed and nursing his wounds, Henry sullenly communicates in sign language with his deaf mother, Lavinia. As another part of his punishment, Henry must milk the...