Summary

The novel opens with a chapter titled “the way.” The first few opening pages are written in italics and include the narrator’s reflections on the story that will be told in the novel. Speaking in the first-person plural voice, the narrator uses these pages to argue for the importance of what he calls remembrance: seeing, hearing and engaging with the past in order to understand the connectedness of the past, present, and future. The narrator addresses the reader directly, telling them not to despair. He notes that only through retelling the story of their community can they avoid continuing “along the road of death” and instead rediscover “our way, the way” (xviii).

When the italicized portion ends, the narrator declares, “We are not a people of yesterday” (1) and observes that many thousands of “seasons” (1) have passed since his people were “unborn” (1). The...