Summary

In the prologue, Harp Oletsky’s first memory is of being pushed into a community jack drive, where townspeople pen hundreds of wild rabbits and beat them for a bounty. The scene is narrated in second person as Harp’s father steers the boy into the center of the pen and explains that the rabbits are destroying crops and money. Harp wants to look away and escape, but the killing continues around him until the last twitching rabbit’s foot stills. His father finds Harp hiding his eyes and insists that the town cannot afford softness. He puts a club in Harp’s hands and makes him kill a rabbit that is still alive, leaving Harp with a lifelong fear and a lesson that survival in Uz comes with violence.

Section One begins on Black Sunday, when the prairie witch known as the...