Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual exploitation, alcoholism, suicide, and racism against Indigenous people.

The narrative begins in Troy Phelan’s first-person point of view. He has gathered his children and former wives, from whom he is estranged, to witness, via closed-circuit television, the signing of his new will. After enumerating his tremendous wealth and assets, he notes: “The money is the root of my misery” (1).

Phelan has three families. He married first wife, Lillian, young and had four children with her: daughters Libbigail (whom he says he erased from his wills after she married an African person) and Mary Ross and sons Troy Junior (TJ) and Rex. He describes all four as “heavily in debt and virtually unemployable” (3). His second wife, Janie, 22 years his junior, is the mother of two of his children: son Rocky, who was killed in a car crash, and daughter Geena. He married his third wife, Tira, 41 years younger than he, when she was pregnant with his son, Ramble, now 14 and already with arrests for shoplifting and marijuana possession. Also present is his servant of 30 years, Snead, of whom Phelan speaks with contempt.