comment on structure

The book is divided into five parts, each with a varying number of chapters. Part one has eighteen chapters. The first chapter opens with a scene in which Dorrigo sees his older brother, Tom, with a young married woman just before her disappearance. That scene is not explained until near the end of the book when Dorrigo learns Tom and the woman, Ruth, had been involved in an affair and that a child was born of that affair. The first section of the book skips around over the course of Dorrigo's life and the final chapter of this section is much later in his life.