The narrator, Cathy, thinks of herself and her siblings as “flowers in the attic […] born so brightly colored, and fading duller through all those long, grim, dreary, nightmarish days when we were held prisoners of hope and kept captives of greed” (3). Following her favorite author Charles Dickens’s example, the narrator intends to adopt a pseudonym and enlists God’s help in grinding “the knife I hope to wield” (4).

Cathy looks on the Pennsylvania childhood home that she shared with her golden PR man father, Chris, her beautiful mother, Corrine, her older brother Christopher, and younger twin siblings Cory and Carrie, as “one long and perfect summer” (5). However, 12-year-old Cathy’s perfect life shatters when her father dies in a road accident. Cathy, who has a close relationship with her father, is devastated, and in denial. She must face the truth, however, when her mother tells her that owing to her own taste for luxury, the family spent beyond their means, and so creditors will repossess their house and belongings. Corrine, who has been writing to her wealthy parents in Virginia, breaks the news that the family will go live with them.