The novel opens on the bleak setting of a run-down railroad track surrounded by darkness, an “Encampment of the damned” (3). It is a setting that was once vibrant but is now broken. A fisherman named Suttree rows a small skiff through the dirty river. He watches a rescue team remove a dead body from the water. He disembarks his boat and hears from the workers that the man is suspected of having jumped to his death. Suttree delivers a catfish to a man who lives below a bridge. They chat a little about Suttree avoiding town and about the man who died in the river. Suttree rows to a shantyboat and lays down on a cot in the cabin. He listens to the sounds of life around him, such as the toads and the trickling water. He recalls the watch on the dead man’s wrist, which makes him think of his grandfather’s clock, and then his father. He recalls his father’s most recent letter in which his father encourages Suttree to find meaning in society instead of the streets. He dreams that he walks with his grandfather, all the while conscious of the boundary between the living and the dead.