His memories shift to the moment when his father died, and the anger he felt over it. He later gets a job but shows an independent streak that keeps him from impressing his family.

He is reprimanded by his family for dreaming, and they send him to run errands. He is young and poor, and he pines for a girl named Susana who had left the village long before. Interspersed with Juan's first hours in Comala is a narrative recounting the childhood of Pedro Páramo. She tells him about the night Miguel died, and seems sad about it. His horse rides forever lamenting his owner's passing. Juan hears a horse galloping by, and is told about Miguel Páramo, Pedro's cruel bastard son - yet the only child he recognized - who was killed on a horse ride. Juan tries to tell her about his aunt whom he grew up with, but she ignores him. She tells Juan a bit about his mother's childhood and also that Abundio has been long dead as well. She tells him that the voices of the dead can be heard in Comala, and confesses she knew he was coming, as his mother sent a message despite being dead.

He seeks out a woman named doña Eduviges on Abundio's recommendation, and finds her in an old house. Once in the village, Juan finds it is deserted. He introduces Juan to the large expanse of land around Comala, called the Media Luna. Abundio tells him that he is Pedro's son as well, and that their father has been dead a long time. As he approaches, a man on a burro, Abundio, overtakes him and leads him down to the valley. She has recently died and asked him to find his father, Pedro Páramo, in the village where she was born. The story begins with Juan Preciado narrating a trip he takes to his mother's home village of Comala. This short summary will present events more or less as they unfold in the novel, though with some synthesis of events for the sake of a more cohesive summary. Furthermore, there are several narrators, some first-person and some third-person omniscient. Much of the responsibility for crafting a chronological narrative falls to the reader. It follows a labyrinthine structure in which the past is interspersed with the present, sometimes in ways that are not clear until halfway through a section. Pedro Páramo is both a simple and very difficult work to summarize.

Pedro paramo goodreads