Chapter 1 Summary

The Lovely Bones opens with the narrator, Susie Salmon, introducing herself as a recently murdered fourteen-year-old girl. Susie is in her heaven, and she describes the accidental meeting with her neighbor, Mr. Harvey, on a dark, snowy evening while walking home through a cornfield.

Mr. Harvey convinces Susie to enter an underground room he has built. Susie has reservations about being cold and the late hour, but she is curious to see the room. As she tells her story, Susie thinks of her father and how he loves to tell embarrassing stories about his two daughters and son.

Mr. Harvey leads Susie to the room that is made almost entirely of earth. Susie has to search to find it. She finds the door by stomping on the ground. It is made of wood. She enters the small room, and she is amazed by...