Sounder begins shortly before Christmas, in a small cabin on a poor, desolate farm somewhere in the American South, where the boy lives with his parents and siblings. There are two dimensions to the setting—one psychological, the other physical. The exact place and time of the story are deliberately vague, but Sounder probably takes place around 1900, before tractors and machines were common on small farms. The psychological setting, the young boy's mind, is more precisely defined.