Content Warning: This section of the guide describes sexual violence, bodily mutilation, and death. The novel also depicts Texas during the American Civil War, presenting the anti-Black attitudes that propagated the system of enslavement in the American South through the use of slurs against Indigenous and Black people. The novel also illustrates racist attitudes toward Latinx people.

On his deathbed, Eli McCullough muses on his life, wishing not to think of the son he calls the “[s]eed of my destruction” (1).

In the early 19th century, the Mexican government offers free land to anyone willing to settle in Texas. Comanche bands indiscriminately hunt and enslave settlers, scaring most away. Eli is born on March 2, 1836, the same day that Texas becomes an independent republic.

Eli’s father, Armstrong, defends his farmland estate from being forcefully taken by new settlers. Nevertheless, by 1846, the McCulloughs have been pushed back to the Pedernales area, considered Comanche hunting territory.

Eighty-six-year-old J.A. “Jeannie” McCullough reflects on the solitude that has plagued her successful career as an oil tycoon.

In her earliest memory, her father, Charles, invited her great-grandfather, Eli, to church. When the Sunday school teacher explained that Eli would go to Hell for refusing the invitation, Jeannie thought of joining Eli.