The book opens with a description of a young woman, later identified as Charity Royall, surveying the neglected landscape of North Dormer, the New England town where she resides. The area appears to be lacking in the charm normally associated with these villages; the wind is described as shaking the “[…] doleful fringes” (3) of the spruces on the neighboring Hatchard property, and the environment is empty and lifeless.

Charity observes an intriguing young man, who is dressed in “city clothes” and “[…] laughing with all his teeth” (3) as he retrieves his straw hat from a nearby pond. She feels unsettled by his easy cheerfulness and experiences a familiar sense of shrinking away from levity. Glancing at her reflection in a hallway mirror, Charity observes her “small, swarthy face” (3) with displeasure and softly exclaims, “‘How I hate everything!’” (4). She recalls one childhood trip sponsored by the local minister to the neighboring, more vital town of Nettleton; however, her world has since diminished in size to encompass only her current community.

Charity was “[…] brought down from the Mountain” (5), an impoverished area, as a very young child and taken in by

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