The brief Prologue primarily recounts the night of December 31, 1999. Because of his church, 12-year-old Gerald believes that the world will end in the Second Coming. Following his realization that the world does not end that night, the adult Gerald, as the narrator, provides an overview of the book. He says that he traveled from the metaphorical “valley of the least of these […] to the mountaintop” and returned with a message: “we must find another mountain, if not another world, to call our own” (6).

Gerald tells the story of a French village where miracles occurred so frequently that the local peasants stopped working. Officials sought the king’s assistance to return the peasants to work, and the monarch decreed that miracles were outlawed. Gerald says that his is “the story of a peasant boy and the king (or a few presidents) and, with luck, God and His miracles or lack thereof” (7).

The first chapter opens to a photograph of a family in an Ohio field. As Gerald focuses on the very happy young boy in the picture, it becomes clear he is describing an old photo of his family. Gerald writes that the book is a way to reconnect with the boy he was.