The novel opens on the fourth birthday of Meggie Cleary. Meggie receives an intricate and ornate doll from her family, bought from a shop in nearby Wahine, a small town in New Zealand. Meggie has never owned a doll before, as her family is poor, and she doesn’t understand that dolls are meant to be played with. Her older brothers Hughie and Jack see her with the doll, and they take it from her and begin to destroy it. Meggie is devastated, “the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for” (6).

Frank, the oldest of Meggie’s five older brothers, is 15, and he is training as a blacksmith. While working in the barn, he remembers that today is Meggie’s birthday; he returns to the house, recalling the events that led their mother to buy the doll in the first place. He finds Meggie in tears and drags Hughie and Jack away from the doll; he reassures Meggie that the doll can be repaired. However, the doll’s hair has come loose, exposing the workings of the head’s interior. He promises Meggie again that the doll can be fixed.

Frank takes Meggie into the house, where their overworked mother Fiona, or Fee, is preparing a birthday dinner.