New England is the setting identified for the novel’s opening in 1835, where Sarah meets her father, Alex Stafford, for the first time. It also anchors Michael Hosea’s account of his family’s plantation, his rejection of slavery, and the experiences that led him toward faith. The region thus links two formative histories: Sarah’s early longing for acceptance and Michael’s break with the world in which he was raised.

Setting and Early Childhood

The story opens in New England in 1835. Sarah, dressed in her best blue frock and white pinafore, sees Alex Stafford at Mass and regards him with the wonder of a child encountering the prince from the stories her mother read. She hopes he will like her appearance, following her mother’s advice to stand still and act like a lady. His lack of pleasure immediately unsettles that expectation, making the place the backdrop to an early experience of rejection.

Michael’s Family History

New England also belongs to Michael’s recollection of growing up in a family that owned the district’s largest plantation and enslaved people. When Michael was ten, after a poor year, his father sold some of the enslaved workers. Michael later describes the killing of a house slave and one of the workers who had been sold, and his father’s use of their deaths to intimidate the others. The account makes the region’s social order part of Michael’s personal history rather than distant background.

Rupture and Religious Awakening

Michael says that he opposed his father’s treatment of the enslaved people and promised to free them. His father beat him and sent him to live among them; after a month, Michael was ordered back to the house. During that period, Old Ezra brought him to the Lord. Michael later connects his father’s hostility and the loss of his inheritance and family ties with the path that led him to faith. His memories of New England therefore carry both the violence of his upbringing and the beginnings of a different moral commitment.

Narrative Significance

The region gathers contrasting beginnings. Sarah’s first encounter with Alex is shaped by a child’s hope that her father will welcome her, while Michael’s account exposes the coercive and violent household from which he eventually separates himself. These histories are not presented as equivalent experiences, but together they establish how family and social power shape the characters’ early lives—and how later choices grow out of those beginnings.