Alice (née Gardner) Goodwin

The 32-year-old narrator of Parts 1 and 3 of A Map of the World, Alice is married to Howard and is the mother of two young daughters, Emma and Claire. Blond and statuesque when she and Howard met and thoroughly bored in school, Alice has become a licensed practitioner nurse and works mornings as a school nurse at Blackwell Elementary. She is also a feared "shot lady" at clinics. During summer vacations, she trades off watching her and her neighbor and best friends' two daughters. Distracted one hot morning, Alice does not notice that Lizzy Collins has slipped out of the house and gone to the pond to cool off. Alice finds Lizzy drowned, in her panic does a bad job of administering CPR, and stays in the waiting room of the hospital emergency ward until the family abandons hope and discontinues life-support.

Alice panics again...