Summary

Chapter 1 – Narrator Summer begins her story by suggesting it will the story of her family’s year of consistent very bad luck, which she says is called "kouun" in Japanese. She then explains that her parents were called to Japan to attend to some elderly relatives as they prepared to die, that she couldn’t go because she contracted “airport malaria” (from a mosquito that unexpectedly arrived in America on a plane from a country where malaria was common), and that she has a complicated relationship with mosquitoes, simultaneously being terrified of them and finding them beautiful. She adds that her terror of mosquitoes leads her to the near-obsession of DEET, a powerful insect repellent, without which she feels frightened and nervous. Summer also explains that her family worked for Parker Harvesting, Inc. as custom harvesters (i.e. a team that goes...