In October 1941, Azalea “Knot” Centre’s boyfriend Pratt Shepherd urges her to stop drinking. She tells him to “go to hell” (3), and he leaves. A few days later, Knot receives a note from Pratt stating his desire to marry her and start a family. The note also announces his intention to leave West Mills, North Carolina, the town where they live, in one week if she does not respond. Azalea and Pratt live in a small, predominantly African American neighborhood on one side of the town’s canal.

That weekend, Knot visits her friend and neighbor Otis Lee Loving who advises her to reconcile with Pratt, asking “Why you so set on bein’ lonely, Knot?” (5). He and his wife, Penelope “Pep” Loving, tell her that the townspeople gossip about her drinking. Knot goes home and reads a chapter of Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, which her father read to her in Ahoskie, North Carolina. She lived in Ahoskie until her father arranged for her to become a schoolteacher in West Mills. Knot is a skilled teacher but doesn’t enjoy her work.

The night before Pratt intends to leave is Knot’s 27th birthday.