Parts 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “October 14” - Part 3: “October 16”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Double Diamond Ranch”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and animal death.
On a beautiful fall day in Wyoming, 25-year-old army veteran Clay Hutmacher, Jr., is fishing for Trout in the Twelve Sleep River. Sharing its name with the county, the river is so-called because Indigenous American tribes believed it took 12 sleeps, or nights, to travel to the area from the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and Montana.
Knee-deep in the stream, Clay thinks about the engagement ring in his pocket. He plans to propose to his girlfriend, Sheridan Pickett, who is a falconer and the daughter of a local game warden, Joe Pickett. Clay wonders if he should have asked Joe’s permission to propose but is not sure if Joe would have said yes. Even if Joe approves of him, it won’t influence Sheridan’s answer, as she is very strong-minded. Clay loses himself in the act of casting the line and awaiting the pull of the hooked fish.
A few minutes later, a doe crashes out from the woods behind Clay and enters the water, swimming toward the opposite shore. Clay barely has time to wonder what spooked the doe when an enormous grizzly bear charges into the river.
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