The novel is broken down into seasons, days, and narrative points of view. Although Davidson sometimes deploys multiple narrators per day, this guide will break the plot down into sections that cover one day.

In this opening chapter, 53-year-old Rich Gundersen visits his mentor Lark. Lark is a long-retired logger who spends his days carving sasquatch figurines for tourists and charging them to use a toilet on his property. In his working days, he was a firm friend to Rich’s dead father, Hank, also a logger. Lark has taken it upon himself to look after Rich in lieu of his late friend. He introduces Rich to another local old boy, Jim Mueller, who is selling a famous piece of land nearby: a 720-acre ridge named after the ancient Redwood topping it, the so-called “24-7” tree, for its twenty-four-foot-seven-inch width. Out of respect for Rich’s father, who dreamed of buying the land and harvesting the fabled tree with Rich, Mueller says Rich can have the land for $250,000. The sum is still fortune to Rich, but the harvested timber could be worth four times that. As Mueller explains to Rich, however, his ability to harvest it will come down to whether local logging company Sanderson puts in roads to some of its few remaining old-growth trees on the neighboring land, known as Damnation Grove.