Summary

Part I boldly begins with Bea, one of the book’s two principal protagonists, giving birth to a stillborn baby. Bea is a nickname for Beatrice, whose full name is visible in the section’s title, “The Ballad of Beatrice.” Diane Cook recounts Bea’s birthing experience through a third person point of view limited to Bea’s perspective, which she uses throughout the entire first half of the book. Sensory details of the present-tense birth of Bea’s stillborn mingle with memories of the birth of her daughter Agnes eight years previously. While Agnes was born in a hospital with the help of doctors and nurses, Bea births her stillborn alone in the middle of an unnamed wilderness.

This wilderness is hot, dry, dusty, and sandy, and its land is inhabited with coyotes, buzzards, and wolves. Natural features such as “blooming sage...