The novel opens with a vivid description of the prairie in Oklahoma in the spring. It’s May 24, 1921, and Mollie Burkhart, a member of the Osage tribe, is worried about Anna Brown, one of her three sisters, because she’s been missing for three days. Mollie is concerned but tries not to worry because Anna has been known to disappear on benders (drinking, dancing, etc.). Usually, Anna returns to Mollie’s house, but this time, “there was a silence as still as the plain” (11). Mollie’s sister Minnie had died three years earlier.

As members of the Osage Tribe, Mollie, her sisters, and their parents are all wealthy thanks to oil deposits on the Osage land. The Osage Tribe originally lived on land now known as Kansas, but in the late 1800s, white settlers forced them to move to a reservation in Oklahoma. The barren, rocky land shocked everyone when it turned out to be on top of large oil deposits. As the oil was discovered and tapped, “prospectors had to pay the Osage” (11). By the early 20th century, the Osage Tribe was earning millions per year and were “the wealthiest people per capita in the world” (12).