Summary

Pages 3 - 39 -- The novel opens with a page of fragments detailing the birth of polar explorer Eivor Minervudottir in 1941, on the Faroe Islands. It then moves into a section from the perspective of the woman who wrote the preceding paragraphs, and who is referred to as the biographer, and as Roberta. Roberta is at a gynecologist appointment, where she is given a new prescription to enhance her fertility. She is a single 42-year-old woman who is both desperate for a child, and afraid of the fact that she does not understand what her doctor, Dr. Kalbfleisch, is doing to her body. She moved to Newville, Oregon to become a high school history teacher seven years ago. She goes to pick up her new fertility medication after a day of teaching, and thinks about how others must think she is too old to become...