Part I: Chapters One through Seven Summary

As the story opens, a young woman is traveling the countryside in search of those who remember the days of slavery. She is employed by the Works Progress Administration on this project and hears several people talking about the storm known as "Cox's Snow." The young woman then meets up with a woman named Miss Marguerite who begins telling her story, starting with Cox's Snow at Stratford Plantation in Virginia on January 22, 1857. In those days, Miss Marguerite was known as Midge.

Uther Botkin is sixty-five, a poor man who has property bordering Stratford Plantation left to him by a relative. He'd married a young, unhealthy woman named Martha when Uther came into the inheritance. They have a slave "boy," Jesse. Then Martha gives birth to a daughter, Sallie, and dies six months later...