The first part of the book begins with Ron and Janet Reimer and the hardy, persistent community from which they come. Ron and Janet both descend from Canadian Mennonites. There is a mass Mennonite migration to the area around Winnipeg, coincident with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which “transformed the once tiny and isolated fur-trapping settlement” (4).

After World War II, both Ron’s and Janet’s parents move to Winnipeg from the prairie. Both children are pulled in by popular culture and drift from their parents’ Mennonite faith, however nominal. Fearing these cultural factors, the parents take their families back to the prairie when Ron and Janet are in their early teenage years. Ron hates doing “grueling labor for little pay” (5), and Janet struggles to keep her social life alive, “accepting dates from any boy who had a car and thus could offer her escape from the farm” (7).

Janet’s mother orders her to move out at 15. She finds work and lives with a cousin in Steinbach. Ron and Janet meet when Ron visits Janet’s cousin, Tina, with a friend who is dating her. Ron is shy, but he eventually begins a relationship with Janet; “their similarities drew them together, but paradoxically enough so did their differences” (7).