Naylor’s novel begins with a prologue, “Dawn.” It is a short introduction to Brewster Place, which she personifies so that it almost becomes a character, an antagonist as well as the setting. Brewster Place is the “bastard child” of politicians and realtors, who “conceive it” in a “damp smoke-filled room.” It is born just three months later (Naylor implies that its premature birth has malign long-term results), and its “baptism” occurs two years later. Cut off from the rest of the unidentified city by a wall, it “became a dead-end street.” Both the wall and Ben, its first African American resident, become “fixtures,” so that when Ben dies, the wall’s destruction almost inevitably follows in Mattie’s dream.