Content Warning: This section of the study guide discusses a suicide attempt as well as assisted suicide. This section also includes discussion of themes and depictions of racism, enslavement, misogyny, and anti-gay bias, as well as references to racist and outdated language, attempted sexual coercion, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

Rae Lynn Cobb is one of the two protagonists of the novel. Rae Lynn is a 25-year-old woman from North Carolina. Rae Lynn grew up in an orphanage, where she was dropped off as a baby. Rae Lynn had long struggled with loneliness and grief, specifically with a “growing sense of not belonging and the idea of having her own little family was something she’d never thought possible” (18). This loneliness motivated her to marry Warren, with whom she steadily fell in love, though they were never able to have children. Together, she and Warren operate a small turpentine farm until he is severely injured and Rae Lynn is forced to kill him out of mercy. After his death, Warren’s friend Butch tries to extort her, motivating her to go to Swallow Hill, disguising herself first as a man and then as a teenage boy. Though she works hard, the camp’s conditions and environment are brutal, and her tolerance of the Black workers and inability to keep up with the others make Crow seek a way to punish her.