The Jim Crow era, which lasted from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, was a period of intense racial segregation, systemic oppression, and racist violence in the United States, especially in the South. This era was particularly brutal for Black Americans and Indigenous Americans, both of whom faced widespread violence and discrimination. For Black Americans, violence was a constant threat. Lynchings—extrajudicial murders enacted by citizens—were common and served as a tool of terror to enforce racial hierarchies. During the Jim Crow era, thousands of Black individuals were lynched in the South, often for perceived slights or baseless accusations. The legal system provided little protection, as law enforcement and judicial institutions were often complicit in these acts of violence. The threat of anti-Black lynchings is a constant background presence in Verble’s novel and informs the actions of Crawford, the novel’s only Black character.

Indigenous Americans faced their own harrowing experiences of discrimination and violence during the Jim Crow era. In the 1920s, shortly before the action of the novel, oil was discovered on Osage land in Oklahoma near Two Feathers’s home. The oil made the Osage Nation wealthy almost overnight, and that wealth attracted a number of white businessmen seeking to gain control of the oil rights through murder or manipulation.