Summary

Chapter 1 (The Present) – The chapter and the book open with this sentence: “The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.” Narration describes the storm the night before; Larry’s routine around the farm where he lives (including taking care of his mother’s chickens, all named after American First Ladies); his family history (a bachelor in his forties, father dead, mother ill with Alzheimer’s disease in a nursing home), and hints at a troubled personal history, including a reference to not being allowed a gun “because of his past”, his being a “person of interest” in the disappearance of both “the Rutherford girl”, and a girl named Cindy Walker. When Larry comes home from work to get ready to take his mother to lunch, he finds a man...