By beginning Ten North Frederick with the funeral of its major character, O'Hara essentially starts at the conclusion of the story and then traces the events that have led to this point. The comments of the people gathered for the funeral become the threads that have been the tapestry of Joe Chapin's life and also the life of Gibbsville over a period of sixty-five years. The narrative voice several times refers to the story as a "biography," but although there are some superficial resemblances between the life of Joe Chapin and that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this is not the biography of an actual person.

Instead, O'Hara uses the concept of biography as a device to step away from Chapin and view him as a figure in a larger drama. Ten North Frederick consists of two parts. Part One, by far the majority of the novel, tells the...