Thirteen-year-old Moose Flanagan, the novel’s first-person narrator, relates that his father has just been promoted from electrician to associate warden of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Today (Sunday, January 19, 1936) is his first day on the job. The prison on Alcatraz Island, just off San Francisco, houses some of the country’s most notorious criminals: “world famous” robbers, swindlers, burglars, murderers, and many “ordinary” prisoners, too. Moose is one of a handful of children who live on the island with their families, mostly in the apartment house known as the “64 building”; on weekdays, he takes the ferry to go to school in the city, but some of his teachers don’t believe him when he says he lives on Alcatraz. His friend and neighbor, Annie Bomini has also been punished for “lying” about where she lives. By contrast, Moose’s friend Piper Williams, the “slippery” daughter of Alcatraz’s warden, somehow evades punishment for her actual (though minor) misdeeds.

Cam Flanagan’s promotion to associate warden worries his son, who believes he is “too nice” for the job. His father, Moose thinks, looks more like a dance instructor than a warden or prison guard. By contrast, the ornery guard Darby “Double Tough” Trixle seems to have been “born in a uniform, one size too tight” (2).