Setting

Almost all of the novel takes place in a neighborhood outside of Grangerford, a fictional town in an unnamed state, likely in the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic region. Grangerford—an allusion to one of the two rural, feuding families in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—is a lightly populated town that’s nevertheless the largest in the county. The narrator purposely describes its location vaguely, suggesting that places like it are found everywhere. It’s a place of law and order, faith and family, tradition and morals, big trucks and small government. Most families have been in the area for generations. But because of the region’s deterioration, those who still work are mostly employed by the prison, the school system, or what’s left of farms in the valley and a few industries extracting what’s remaining in the hills to the south.