It is the Labor Day weekend, and Roy and Celestial Hamilton drive from Atlanta (where the couple lives) to Eloe (a rural town in Louisiana) to visit Roy’s parents, Big Roy and Olive. Roy narrates the opening chapter. The couple have been married for eighteen months. They met when they both attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College, introduced at a student mixer by a mutual friend, Dre Tucker. Roy, now a textbook sales rep, makes a comfortable living. Celestial creates one-of-a-kind dolls—she has already been profiled in a magazine as one of Atlanta’s up and coming artists.

For Roy, his wife is “the perfect balance in a woman, not a button-down corporate type, but she wore her pedigree like a gloss on a patent-leather shoe” (8). Although not from poverty (Roy’s parents run a successful sporting goods store), Roy is aware of his in-laws’ wealth (Celestial’s mother is a school district assistant superintendent; her father is a retired high school chemist who had stumbled into a formula that kept orange juice fresher and had made a fortune). The couple moved into Celestial’s childhood home (the parents, suddenly millionaires, deeded the house to them and relocated to a grand Victorian showplace). Roy is proud that he completed college, left home, and is now poised for long-term career success.