“The Comanche philosophy toward outsiders was nearly papal in its thoroughness: torture and kill the men, rape and kill the women, take the children for slaves or adoption. Few from the ancient countries of Europe took the Mexicans up on their offer. In fact, no one came at all. Except the Americans. They flooded in. They had women and children to spare and to him that overcometh, I giveth to eat of the tree of life.”

This passage establishes the backdrop over which Eli’s story will take place. The Comanche warriors are ruthless in their treatment of outsiders, but their fervor is more than matched by the sheer desire of American settlers to own land. Eli foreshadows the ways the American imperative will ruin the land by quoting the Book of Revelation: “[T]o him that overcometh, I giveth to eat of the tree of life” is part of the Christian theology that justified the entitlement the white settlers feel about the territory they take from Indigenous peoples.

“Of course it was going to happen this way; even as a child she’d been mostly alone. Her family had owned the town. People made no sense to her. Men, with whom she had everything in common, did not want her around. Women, with whom she had nothing in common, smiled too much, laughed too loud, and mostly reminded her of small dogs, their lives lost in interior decorating and other peoples’ outfits. There had never been a place for a person like her.”

Meyer uses Jeannie’s first chapter to root the conflict of her story in her sense of loneliness. Jeannie believed that by rising to the occasion of upholding her family legacy, she could finally fit in with the men who surrounded her all her life. In her old age, Jeannie reflects that she is still lonely, which drives the reader to wonder what she discovers about her initial assumptions to perpetuate her loneliness.

“This journal will be the only true record of this family. In Austin they are planning a celebration for the Colonel’s eightieth birthday, and what will be honestly said about a man who is lionized in capitols, I don’t know. Meanwhile, our bloody summer continues.”

Peter’s storyline begins with the implication that the accepted history of his family is untrue. This raises questions about family mythology and who gets to decide what is remembered. By juxtaposing this statement with the brutality that surrounds Eli’s celebration, it is suggested that history is determined by those who prosper from bloodshed, making this passage a comment on