What is the setting in the novel, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things?

The settings change from story to story, but most involve impoverished conditions, illegal activities, perverted sexual activities, and torture. Vehicles change as Sarah changes men, and a good portion of Jeremiah's life is spent in them. Jeremiah's grandparents' house starts out as a place of safety but quickly turns into its own form of torture with exceedingly hot baths and extreme corporal punishments. The desert settings in Nevada and California's Death Valley bring symbolic parallels with Jeremiah's and Sarah's lives: dry and barren, beyond redemption. The setting of the shack in West Virginia where methamphetamine is cooked in the basement has climactic senses of impending danger followed by a big explosion.