Summary

The first of three larger sections of the novel begins with an excerpt from the Walt Whitman poem “This Compost” which conveys the narrator’s realization that all nature and life must be fueled by death and their ensuing disillusionment. Chapter 1 then begins in the Dakota Territory in December of 1866, where an unnamed cavalry officer looks through a peephole in a door at a prisoner. He holds a ledger in his hands detailing the prisoner’s story, which recounts that the prisoner and the officer met once during the Civil War, although the officer can no longer remember the encounter.

Chapter 2 takes the form of a journal entry dated three days prior to Chapter 1, on December 18th. The writer, named Michael, recalls getting the idea for keeping a journal from overhearing General William T. Sherman telling officers’ wives to keep accounts of their...