Summary

In Chapter 1, Dell Parsons, the narrator, recounts how his parents arrived at the startling decision to rob a bank, after which some murders occurred. He begins his story by providing lengthy descriptions of his parents.

Born in 1923 in Alabama, his father, Bev Parsons, possessed good looks and a Southern charm that easily endeared him to people. During the 1940s, he joined the Air Force and became a bombardier, though his career in the military proved to be, according to his son, more ordinary than spectacular. After he returned from duty, he met Neeva Kamper, the narrator’s mother, with whom he had a quick sexual encounter that resulted in the birth of the narrator. They get married even though they could not be more unlike one another. Neeva was the daughter of intellectual Jewish parents who graduated from college at the age...