Hiram, a slave, is driving a carriage that contains a woman and Maynard, his white half-brother and the heir of Howell, when a blue-tinted vision of a door forces Hiram off a bridge and into the waters of the Goose River one night in Elm County, Virginia. The vision is of people sold into slavery in the Deep South, never to be heard from again. Among those lost people is Rose, Hiram’s mother, dancing with water jars on her head (a traditional dance with origins in West Africa). Once in the water, Hiram must choose between rescuing Maynard, for whom he has been responsible since he was a boy, or saving his own life. After years of resenting having to serve as a slave to his own half-brother, Hiram chooses to save himself. Hiram’s life flashes before his eyes, and he resigns himself to his own death. He sees his mother (Rose) give a young boy a shell necklace, and then he loses consciousness.

The opening of the blue door on the bridge over the Goose River is not the first time something uncanny happened around Hiram. Hiram was always a strange child: He has a perfect memory of everything he has ever seen or heard, except for the day he was parted from his mother.