Where It All Goes Down
Grand Tower, Illinois, and Cairo, Illinois (1861)—Grand Tower, Illinois, and the Road to St. Louis (1916)
Thanks to the two narrators and two time periods, we get to deal with more than one setting in this puppy. Let's take it chronologically, though, and look at 1861 first.
We open in the first month of the Civil War, April 1861, in Grand Tower, Illinois, a tiny town on the Mississippi River in Southern Illinois, an area deeply divided along Union/Confederacy lines.
Into this backwoods town come Delphine and Calinda, big-city girls from New Orleans. While some of the action takes place in the town (we use the term generously) of Grand Tower, most occurs in the Pruitts' home, aka the House Astride the Devil's Backbone, which is where we'll return in 1916.
In the middle of a war, however, people don't get to stay in one place, and Tilly is driven from Grand Tower to Cairo, Illinois, by her mother's insistence that she find her soldier brother and bring him home. Noah is in Cairo at Camp Defiance, which is situated, appropriately enough for the larger themes of our story (this book is all about divisions and intersections), at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. In the end, the loss of an arm in his first battle gives Noah the freedom to return to Grand Tower with Tilly and Delphine.
More than anything, what matters about the 1861 setting is that our characters find themselves at a cultural intersection in the country and in the heart of the Civil War. Without this, much of the action and big-deal moments (like, say, the revelation that Delphine isn't white) either don't happen or don't hold as much weight.
The second setting is 1916, which, conveniently, happens to also be near the beginning of a war, just prior to the United States' entrance into World War I. Coincidence? We think not. In using a sort of parallel setting, we're asked to consider war and the ways in which it repeats itself.
While Tilly tells Howard her story in 1916, most of Howard's own narration happens on the road. Roads are usually significant, often symbolizing—get this—a journey. There's the literal journey between Grand Tower and St. Louis, yes, but there's also the metaphorical journey Howard takes into understanding himself by finally understanding where his father comes from.