Summary

Prologue

Third Month opens with 29-year-old Elishaba, whose real name is Butterfly Sunstar, and her sister Jerusalem hastily packing and using snow machines to travel from their family home high on an Alaskan mountain and the tiny, almost abandoned town of McCarthy below. They are among 15 children of the Pilgrim family and they are running away, certain to incur their father's wrath if they are caught. After some mechanical difficulties, they proceed down the mountain, then hide their Tundra and themselves under snow and white sheets as they hear a snowmachine coming up the valley.

Chapter 1, The Road to McCarthy

Papa Pilgrim and several of his 15 children arrive in the tiny wilderness town of McCarthy, Alaska in a couple of old trucks. The year is 2002. The children are quiet and well behaved but the entire family is dressed in tattered vintage clothing. They...