The omniscient narrator describes the landscape of the Oregon coast and the fictionalized Wakonda Auga River. The description takes an ominous turn when the narrator focuses on a disembodied arm attached to the pole of a boat going downriver. The end of the novel will reveal that the arm belongs to Henry Stamper, patriarch of the rugged Stamper family. The Stampers reside in an unconventional, ramshackle house on an isolated riverbank that is under constant threat of flooding.

The narrative cuts to a scene of union loggers standing on the bank across from the Stamper house. Floyd Evenwrite, the union’s local representative, and Jonathan Bailey Draeger, the union’s president, discuss the river and its tendency to flood. The union is struggling because Hank Stamper, the eldest son of Henry, is continuing the family’s non-union logging operation despite the fact that the union is on strike—in effect, the Stampers are strikebreakers. Draeger goes to a bar after the union meeting, where he runs into Hank’s wife Viv. She shows Draeger pictures of the Stamper family and says that understanding the complicated family requires knowing their roots.