The novel opens with a flashback to a time before the novel's plot takes place. It is a time when the narrator's family was living in the mountains, and the narrator recalls seeing a man named "amountain man" on the wall of honor at school. The man was the dean of the school, and he was a man who was respected by his students. The narrator recalls that the man's wife and child had died in an accident, and that he devoted all his energy into the children.