Chapter 1 Summary

This story begins in a middle-class neighborhood in St. Louis in the fall of 1959. From the moment we meet the precocious, passionate and saucy yet sensitive title character, thirteen-year-old Betsey Brown, we know she feels "different" from her family: the oldest of four children, she has staked out the secrets spaces of the house where she can watch the sunrise in peace or just keep herself apart from the hubbub of the house.

We meet the Brown family as they assemble to start a new day, with the parents off to work and the children off to school. The two younger, Margot and Sharon, squabble over bathroom privileges and clothes. The youngest, Allard, wails about spooks in the shadows and, as usual, decides to solve the problem by setting a fire. Cousin Charlie, who has come to stay with the family after having...