72 pages • 2 hours read
Louise ErdrichA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
The murderer’s gun jams while the baby cries. The man listens to the same song over and over while he tries to fix his gun—this song will arise again at the end of the novel to reveal the killer’s identity. The baby falls asleep, and the man raises the gun over the baby’s crib. “The odor of raw blood was all around him in the closed room” (1).
The Preface to the book begins with a short, singular paragraph that does not describe the murders. Rather, this paragraph describes a single scene in which the murderer attempts to kill the baby but finds his gun jammed. The audience does not know if the baby dies, leaving the reader with many questions propelling them into the story. The reader is motivated to unravel the mystery.
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