Summary

In the dead of winter in the rural, sparsely populated town of Chosen, NY, June Pratt notices her sole neighbor, George Clare, and his young daughter Franny, standing outside in the snow. When she lets them into her home, she quickly infers that something horrible has happened to George’s wife, Catherine. June’s husband, Joe, subsequently calls the police.

The first few scenes of the chapter, though written in third person, are from June’s vantage point. The Clare’s purchased “the Hale place” (8), an old farmhouse that bore witness to years of war, and “lost families,” (3) and seems to have a deeply intertwined history with the Chosen locals. June’s recollections of her intermittent sightings of the Clare family are quite unexceptional, describing “the wife [taking] the child out of doors” during the day or the family “having supper, the little...