Content Warning: This section makes references to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and addiction.

Christy’s daughter, Catherine, accompanies her mother to Cutter Gap, the site of Christy’s stories from young adulthood. Some things have changed since she left—most significantly, the lands were incorporated into a new national forest and national park in the late 1930s and early 40s, meaning that the families who lived there have all moved away. Some of the buildings, however, remain, and Christy takes Catherine from place to place, describing the characters so vividly that both are convinced the story ought to be made known: “The story aches to be told, Catherine” (19). Catherine resolves to write the story from her mother’s point of view, limiting the narrative to just the extraordinary events of Christy’s first year at Cutter Gap.

It is late in the year 1912 when Christy Huddleston sets out from her hometown of Asheville to her new posting at the mission in Cutter Gap. Her father accompanies her to the train station and instructs the conductor to keep an eye out for his daughter’s safety—a comment that Christy silently resents because she is set on proving her toughness and resilience.