Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and racist violence, hate crimes, the legacy of colonialism, and threats of sexual assault. It also quotes offensive terms to refer to Indigenous Americans, which feature in the novel.

The narrator, 17-year-old Victoria Nash, grew up with her family in the town of Iola, which was flooded to make the Blue Mesa Reservoir. The graves of her ancestors were relocated to a hillside before the town was underwater. Victoria laments the loss of her home and the way that history would write of the flooding as part of a story of progress and development. She has a different perspective to offer on the events, explaining that even if the town was destroyed with good intentions for progress, it caused grief for those that called it home. She carries its memory with her.

Victoria is heading to town to fetch her wayward 15-year-old brother Seth back to her family farm before sunrise. (Seth also has a problematic fondness for gambling.) On the way, she encounters a stranger who introduces himself as Wilson Moon, or Wil. He has run away from working in a coal mine and has embraced a traveling lifestyle; he has just arrived in Iola.