Content Warning: The source material and guide contain discussions of enslavement, racism, and white supremacist violence that includes the murder of a child. The novel also uses outdated racial terminology as well as some racial slurs; this guide obscures the n-word and otherwise reproduces such terms only in quoted material.

Olivia Carteret (née Merkell) goes into early labor due to emotional upset. Dr. Price chides her nursemaid, Mammy Jane, for taking poor care of her, but Mammy Jane notes that she nursed Olivia and her mother before her and that she can be relied on to do the same for the family now. To explain Olivia’s state, Mammy Jane discusses the family history between the Carterets and the Millers. After the death of her mother, Olivia was raised by her Aunt Polly (Mrs. Ochiltree). Olivia’s father, Samuel, took up with a Black servant, Julia, whom he impregnated. Janet Miller, the result of this union and Olivia’s half sister, now lives with her husband, Dr. Miller, in the former Carteret mansion. The Carterets lost their money in the war, and although Major Carteret, Olivia’s husband, now has a successful newspaper—the Morning Chronicle—he resents the presence of a Black family in his lost ancestral home.