Prologue, Pages 12 - 26 Summary

"One True Thing" is the story of Kate Gulden's battle with cancer and the way it affected the lives of her entire family, especially her daughter, Ellen, who left a busy life in New York to come home to care for her. The story is told through Ellen's perspective as she discovers truths about her family that she never expected, and comes to terms with her family history after being charged with her mother's murder.

The novel opens with the narrator, Ellen Gulden, sitting in the local jail. The officer running the local jail, Skip, graduated in the same high school class as Ellen, and is thus able to tell reporters inside information about her. While lying on her cot, Ellen replays the same image over and over in her head: her father feeding her mother with a spoon...