An elderly, self-described “storyteller” who lives on the banks of the Gilead River in Fremont County, Minnesota, begins to recount his experiences as a boy during the summer of 1932 to his great-grandchildren.

Within a week of their father’s death and two years after their mother’s death, Odysseus “Odie” O’Banion, the narrator, who is eight years old, and his brother, Albert, who is 12, are enrolled as the only White students at the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota. When the school’s superintendent, Mrs. Brickman, whom the students refer to as “the Black Witch” (12), tells the story of the tortoise and the hare, Odie questions her interpretation. She tells him that she is responsible for selecting and interpreting stories. That night, Mr. Brickman takes Odie and Albert to sleep in a cold cell called the “quiet room,” whose only occupant is a rat Albert nicknames Faria after a character from Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo.

Four years later, after another night in the quiet room, Mrs. Brickman threatens to send Odie to a reformatory school if his behavior doesn’t improve. She also threatens to take his harmonica, a gift from his father.