Summary

The novel’s prologue opens in the year 2015. Three friends arrive in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. Chilmark is located on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. The friends—Teddy, Lincoln, and Mickey—are in their mid-sixties. They originally met as undergraduates at Minerva College in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Tuition was expensive, so they worked in a kitchen at the school to help fund their educations. In 1969, the federal government held a lottery to determine the order in which people would be drafted for the Vietnam War. Mickey received a low number, meaning he would likely be drafted. Lincoln—full name Lincoln Moser—had grown up in the small town of Dunbar, Arizona. His father Wolfgang Amadeus Moser—W.A. Moser for short—owned part of a copper mine there. W.A. was domineering and politically conservative. Lincoln’s mother...