The book opens on the protagonist, the Girl, asleep in a barn near New Orleans in 1950. (NOTE: In later chapters, the Girl takes the name Gilda from the vampire who turns her. In this chapter only, Gilda only refers to that older vampire, while the protagonist is called the Girl.) The Girl is a slave who has just run away alone from her plantation, and she dreams fitfully of her mother’s cooking and wisdom while she tries to rest.

She is awakened by a white bounty hunter who grabs her from the straw and tries to rape her, but the Girl uses her knife to kill him. As his blood pours over her, she feels strangely peaceful. The Girl is then discovered by the farmhouse’s owner, the vampire Gilda. (The author doesn’t explicitly reveal that Gilda is a vampire until the end of the chapter, though she provides indications throughout.)

They ride to the outskirts of New Orleans, where Gilda has owned and managed a brothel called Woodard’s for the last 15 years. Young women of a variety of races work there together under Gilda’s care, including Bird, a Lakota woman who is Gilda’s co-manager, lover, and secretly a fellow vampire.