Summary

As Chapter 1 begins, a girl named Shawnee cares for her two younger siblings, Alice and Apitchi, in a small, cold house. Their mother has left them there and Alice and Apitchi are growing hungry and restless. Shawnee begins scouring the house for anything edible and eventually finds a single candy bar hidden in a cabinet. Recognizing that the house is going to become unsustainably cold, Shawnee finds a vent that was once attached to a wood-burning stove. She rips the cover off the vent, makes a small stack of metal objects, and then builds a fire. She, Alice, and Apitchi huddle under a bearskin blanket.

Chapter 2 begins in a bar, where a woman named Ira is flirting with a man. named John. After some time, Ira explains that she has come to the bar in order to prostitute herself...