Summary

The novel is narrated in third-person past by a narrator who switches between chapters that have focalization either on Krissy in 1994 or on Margot in 2019. The epilogue is the only outlier—the narrator zooms in on Billy’s perspective in 1994 during the final section. In “Chapter One: Krissy, 1994,” Wakarusa, Indiana is introduced as a small town where rumors and gossip fly. Krissy Jacobs and her husband, Billy, were 25 and had six-year-old twins. Krissy knew that the rumors could be cruel, so even before “everything happened,” she always wore the right clothes and went to church on Sundays. She was afraid of what she might lose if she ever fell prey to the rumor mill. On the day her life was ruined, Krissy got up at five and went downstairs where she saw a message spraypainted on the wall: “FUCK YOUR FAMILY…THAT BITCH...