The Prologue sets up the world of Southern housewives, women who were “instructed in the wifely arts to become perfect partners and responsible parents” (9). The Prologue also stresses that this story will feature blood, and there will be a lot of it.

The story opens in November of 1988. Patricia Campbell, a 39-year-old housewife, lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, with her family: her two kids (daughter Korey and son Blue), her psychiatrist husband, Carter, and his mother, Miss Mary, who suffers from dementia and has moved in with them.

Patricia is supposed to lead the discussion of the novel Cry, the Beloved Country for the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant, and she is far from ready. Though she attempts to fumble her way through the meeting, it is quickly apparent that neither Patricia nor the other members of the Guild have read the novel. The meeting quickly disbands. As Patricia leaves to head home, Kitty Scruggs and Maryellen stop her and invite her to join a book club they’ve decided to form, with books they actually enjoy reading. The first one is Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs.