Content Warning: This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous oppression, settler colonialism, graphic violence, murder, and death. It quotes pejorative and dated language to describe Indigenous people used in the source material.

The year is 1839, and 11-year-old Nathan Fowler lives on a farm in Ohio with his sister, Molly, who’s nine. At night, there’s a knock on the cabin door. Nathan thinks it’s their father, Pa, but Pa wouldn’t knock on his door: He’d come right in and hug his children.

The knocks continue, and the family dogs, Duffy and Winston, keep barking. Nathan opens the door and sees a “white man” with long hair, a beard, and “dark” eyes. Nathan has never seen a white man wear animal skins before. Molly asks the mysterious man, Ezra Ketcham, what he wants, and the man gives Molly the locket that belonged to their mother, Mama.

Pa has been missing for six days. Nathan and Molly try to be optimistic, but they have the feeling that something bad happened to him. Molly cries, and Nathan wants to cry, but he remembers what Pa said about being “the man of the house” (6), so Nathan conceals his emotions.