The story takes place during the 1930s in Cotton Junction, a small town in Georgia. The farmers lead a spare, hardworking life typical of rural communities during the Great Depression.

Cotton Junction's business district consists of little more than the courthouse, post office, drugstore, cafe, and dry goods store. Because the town was one that "General Sherman somehow missed" on his destructive Civil War march through the South, Cotton Junction still boasts many handsome houses with large white columns and wide front porches. On the outskirts of town stand farmhouses and ramshackle homes.

Queenie says "one good puff from an angry wolf would splinter the two-room shack that she shares with her mother.