The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Whitaker, Chris. All the Colors of the Dark. Crown Trade Paperback Edition, 2025.

All the Colors of the Dark opens in 1975 Monta Clare, Mo. Saint and Patch are both friendless children. Saint lives with her grandmother, and Patch lives in poverty with his mother who slowly descends into alcoholism throughout the novel. Saint starts a beehive and invites girls from school to taste the honey. None of them show up, but Patch takes one of the girl’s invitations and comes himself. His real name is Joseph, but people call him Patch because he wears an eyepatch to cover his missing eye. The two misfits start to depend upon one another for friendship. They are not included in mainstream society in Monta Clare the way that the wealthy and beautiful Misty Meyer is.

One day Patch hears a scream. He runs to the source and saves Misty from being kidnapped and murdered by a mass murderer. He is kidnapped in her place and is kept in captivity with a girl named Grace who he comes to know and love well. Saint refuses to let anyone in the town give up on finding Patch and follows leads on her own for the over 300 days he is missing. She pressures the police and the media to keep up the search. One day she gets a lead that Police Chief Nix will not follow. She believes the culprit is a man named Eli who is a school photographer. She goes to Eli’s compound as he tries to kidnap her. The building starts on fire, and both she and Patch, who indeed was being kept there, escape. They cannot find Grace.

Saint is lonely when Patch gets back because he only cares about finding Grace. He appreciates that Saint saved him, however, and she helps him in his search. Misty is grateful to Patch for saving her and does not know how to move on beyond what happened to her. She begins cooking horrible foods for Patch as a way to show her appreciation. She does not know that they taste awful. Meanwhile a boy named Jimmy tries to befriend Saint. Misty and Patch start dating, and her father pays Patch off to leave Misty at the end of her senior year of high school so that she can go on living the life that was planned for her.

Patch works in the mines, and he also paints. When he was struggling working his mother’s job because she could not do it herself, a man named Sammy takes him in. Sammy owns a fine arts studio and gives Patch room to paint and sleep because he is grateful that Patch saved Misty. Patch paints picture upon picture trying to capture the essence of Grace. He never actually saw Grace because of the complete darkness they were in, but he knows her features by touch. Even after he finishes his painting of Grace, he continues to paint missing girls. He hopes that the paintings will draw attention to the girls and help get them home. He also wants the paintings to bring peace to their families. Meanwhile Saint becomes a police officer, wanting to stay connected to Grace’s missing person and/or murder case so that she can stay close to Patch. She marries Jimmy, but their relationship is strained, and they divorce after he believes she had an abortion, and he beats her because of that. Jimmy’s mother tells the whole town about the abortion, and Saint does not feel able to completely live down the stigma. Patch begins robbing banks to give money to missing persons charities, and Saint is the one who arrests him.

Eventually Patch gets out of prison, and he reunites with Misty. The two spend a lot of time together. While Patch does not know it, she is trying to determine if he is stable enough to be a positive influence in their daughter, Charlotte’s, life. She decides that he is not, but when he goes to her house to return a ribbon he found, he sees Charlotte and realizes that she is his daughter. The two get to know each other until they finally speak about what no one has spoken of: that they are father and daughter. Misty tells Patch that she is dying of cancer. She dies, and Patch gets custody of the girl. He has already torn down his own house and has built a replica of the house Grace’ described so that he can provide Charlotte with some stability. He realizes that he has to choose between Grace and Charlotte. Now that Charlotte does not have a mother, he knows how much she needs him, and he eventually chooses to put his search for Grace on hold to parent his daughter.

Charlotte and Patch get to know each other better. They go to New York for Charlotte’s birthday. Patch has a showing there and makes a lot of money that he has Sammy donate to charity. He takes Charlotte to the zoo. He loses consciousness, and when he wakes up, a veterinarian is helping him. He realizes that it is Jimmy, and Patch punches him, and Jimmy dies from this fight. Patch is again incarcerated.

While in prison, Saint has custody of an angry Charlotte, and Patch befriends Tooms who is on death row for supposedly killing Grace and the other girls. Patch talks to him in an effort to find out where Grace is buried. Patch discovers where Grace lives thanks to a fellow inmate who recognizes a painting he made of Grace’s hometown. He escapes with the help of Sammy and many other people and makes it to Grace Falls where he discovers Grace alive and waiting for him. Meanwhile, Saint has realized that Tooms is innocent of the murders and gets him exonerated hours before he is to be put to death. She then rushes to Grace Falls and is taken hostage by Eli who Patch then kills. She allows Patch to escape, and she continues to raise Charlotte until the girl is ready to go to college. Before Charlotte goes to college, however, they take a roadtrip, and bumper stickers on cars lead them to a pirate who lives on a sailboat. It is Patch who has continued to write back and forth with Grace.