51 pages • 1 hour read
Rachel CaineStillhouse Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “GINA ROYAL, Wichita, Kansas”
Content Warning: This section refers to murder, sexual violence, torture and mutilation, child abduction, harassment and hate speech, including misogynistic language, threat to life, and rape threats.
Gina’s husband, Mel, is especially busy at work one day and apologetically asks her to pick their two children, Lily (10) and Brady (seven) up from school. She prepares dinner, thinking about how considerate Mel is, then picks up the children. She’s gone from her house for 30 minutes; when she returns to their street, several police cars, a firetruck, and an ambulance are blocking the way.
An intoxicated driver has crashed into Gina’s family’s garage. Mel used the garage as his workshop for his woodworking hobby, creating small furniture and decorative wooden objects, which Gwen dislikes because it takes time away from his family. However, she hasn’t complained about it because he provides financially and is a good father in general. Nobody except Mel ever goes in the garage because he says there are dangerous tools and fumes in there. There’s a separate entrance into the garage that is also locked.
Gina introduces herself to the police officers and asks what’s going on. She’s disappointed that dinner will be ruined. To Gina’s surprise, the police treat her suspiciously, even though they’ve already caught the driver who crashed into her garage, and she hasn’t done anything wrong. The police arrest Gina and lead her inside. They show her what they have found inside the garage: a dead woman’s body with the skin partially removed, hanging from a noose.
Chapter 1 Summary: “GWEN PROCTOR, FOUR YEARS LATER, Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee”
Gina is living in a different state (Tennessee) under a different name (Gwen Proctor). She is divorced. Her children are now called Lanny (short for Atlanta, who is now 14) and Connor (who is now 11). This is the fourth time they’ve switched identities and moved to a new state. They’re not in the Federal Witness Protection Program, but are running from “vigilante” members of the public who threaten them. Mel is now incarcerated and has been sentenced to death, but Gwen knows it will be several years until he is executed, if at all, given the procedures of the justice system. Gwen has learned about Mel’s crimes: He was a serial killer and murdered at least 12 women, using the garage as a place to torture, kill, and rape women, usually removing some of their skin, cutting their vocal cords so they couldn’t scream, and mutilating them. He disposed of their bodies in water, weighing them down. Mel’s crimes were uncovered when the drunk driver crashed into their garage, revealing his last victim. Gwen assisted the police in searching Mel’s storage unit and finding a binder of pictures of the previous victims, which led the police to uncover the bodies.
Initially, Gwen was suspected of being an accomplice to Mel’s crimes: She was tried and acquitted, during which time her children stayed with her mother. Although she was found innocent, the trial has brought Gwen notoriety, and she and her family are subject to hate speech and threats from the public, online and in real life. The family is also targeted by copycat serial killers who are obsessed with Mel and want to continue his work. Mel seems to be running a crime ring and targeting his family. The family has to move and change their identities continually. Currently, they are living in Stillhouse Lake, near the town of Newton.
Gwen is training to carry concealed weapons. She has already been carrying concealed weapons but has decided to get her license. Her instructor is called Javier (Javi). Javi is friendly, chatty and capable. When another man at the range points a gun at another customer, Javi takes control. Another customer, Sam Cade, helps Javi with this. Gwen gets her permit and leaves. She receives a phone call from Lanny’s school principal saying that Lanny is suspended for a week and Gwen needs to come in. Connor texts Gwen that Lanny got in a fight. Gwen thinks that Lanny’s behavioral issues, as well as Connor’s anxiety, are a result of their father’s criminal history and its aftermath. She considers settling in Stillhouse Lake to increase the family’s stability. Gwen has vetted the community and she and her family are living incognito.
At school, the principal criticizes Lanny’s goth outfit, which is against the dress code, as well as her getting into a fight with another student named Dahlia Brown. Lanny says Dahlia started the fight and she was only defending herself like Gwen taught her to do, but Dahlia has several friends who backed her story up that Lanny started it (since Lanny is still pretty new at school, she doesn’t have a lot of friends). Therefore, Lanny is suspended but Dahlia isn’t.
When Mel’s crimes were discovered, Lanny and Connor didn’t attend the trials, see the corpses or photographs, or watch/read the news; they knew their father was a serial killer but did not learn all the details at the time. Gwen has been trying to keep them sheltered from these details, but she’s sure they must know some of them by now. Lanny’s goth makeup looks disturbingly like one of Mel’s murder victim’s faces. On the car ride home, Gwen says Lanny needs to avoid attention. Lanny still says she didn’t start the fight and that goth style isn’t a big deal. They arrive home and go through their security process: They have a serious alarm system and a safe room as well. Every day, Gwen runs a search called the “Sicko Patrol” where she looks for new death threats and harassment targeted at their family online. Search terms related to their dad are blocked on the children’s devices, but Gwen still worries they can find out by using other people’s devices or other methods.
Gwen gets help from an anonymous hacker named Absalom, whom she doesn’t know in real life. She pays him to create false identities, find new safe places to live, and set up cybersecurity on her devices. He was actually her enemy at first, harassing her online and convincing other internet trolls to go after her (either online or in person). However, when others started threatening her children, Absalom apparently changed his mind and started helping Gwen instead.
Gwen and Lanny go for a run around the lake and, as usual, Gwen pushes unhealthily hard and Lanny struggles to keep up. They meet an older man named Ezekiel (or “Easy”) Claremont, then head back.
Chapter 2 Summary
Gwen notices that the man who helped Javi at the gun range, Sam, lives nearby. She opens the door and the alarm isn’t on, so she makes Lanny drive away alone (this is part of their safety plan). Gwen searches the house alone and finds Connor in his room; he just forgot to turn the alarm back on. Gwen calls Lanny and says she can come home.
Gwen goes through her mail and finds a letter from Mel. He sends letters often and has a pattern. He’ll write two official letters in a row that sound like a letter from a loving husband and father. The third letter in each cycle will be different and have bypassed the prison security: angry, containing death threats, and blaming Gwen for taking his children away. Lanny sees the third type of letter, snatches it up, and begins reading it, but doesn’t want to finish. She usually isn’t allowed to read the letters because they’re upsetting.
When Connor gets off the school bus, he chats with two other boys. Gwen assumes these must be the sons of Lancel (or Lance) Graham, a police officer who lives nearby. Connor goes to do homework, and a bit later Officer Graham brings Connor’s cell phone back, claiming his boys found it on the bus after Connor lost it. Gwen’s children aren’t allowed to have social media or smart phones because she considers it a security threat. She’s glad a police officer found it, and invites him in. He asks about the house’s safe room and if she ever found anything in it, such as drugs, because there is an opioid epidemic going on in the area. She says it was just garbage in there and she threw it all out. After Lance leaves, Connor says he didn’t lose his phone, and he thinks the boys stole it. Gwen doesn’t really believe this and thinks Connor was probably careless on the bus home.
The next day (Saturday), the family video chats with Gwen’s mother, who lives in Rhode Island (she also had to move due to harassment). Officer Graham visits again, this time with another man named Detective Prester. A dead body was found floating in the lake, so they want to question Gwen. Gwen didn’t hear or see anything. The police question the children as well.
Prologue-Chapter 2 Analysis
There is a voice and tense shift between the Prologue and the rest of the chapters, from third person, past tense, to first person, present tense. This highlights the protagonist’s shift in identity from “Gina Royal” to “Gwen Proctor”: there is the person she was and the person is now. The shift in point of view projects the idea that the events of the Prologue happened to someone else and that Gina/Gwen was watching rather than experiencing them, indicating that she has attempted to detach herself from a traumatic experience. The present tense and first person of the remaining novel gives the narrative a sense of immediacy and urgency, and creates a close intimacy with the character of Gwen. Gwen Proctor is also shown to be more important than Gina Royal, and to triumph over her, because of these narrative choices. This shift in point of view also dramatizes how Gwen has become more assertive and less passive. She’s become committed to renewing her identity and not defining herself by her husband and his crimes, like most outsiders tend to do. Gwen Proctor continues to narrate the remaining chapters, showing how this identity is more permanent than Gina Royal and also more permanent than the other identities that she had in between. These others are not mentioned by name, suggesting they were simply steps on the way to becoming Gwen.
To build suspense in the early chapters, the author introduces a number of suspicious characters in Gwen’s life. The suspense is complicated by Gwen’s “paranoia” toward everyone she meets: After her sense of reality was broken by the events of the Prologue, she doesn’t know whom or what to trust. Gwen’s past experiences give her plenty of reasons to be suspicious, and the reader is left to watch her make painful judgments about who is trustworthy. In this way, the opening sections set up the theme of The Nature of Safety and Protection, linked to the blurred lines between truth and lies, and reality and unreality. Gwen is shown navigating what this looks like for someone in her situation, and the details of her life show that her everyday experience of keeping herself and her family safe is a world away from the average. Gwen and her family live on the edge of society, in a shadowy alternative world where nothing, even their own identity, is what it seems. They are obliged to rely on shady characters for assistance. These opening chapters also introduce the theme of The Limits of Justice, which will be developed as the novel progresses. The trial has exposed Gwen to public hate—much of it illegal threats and behavior—although she is innocent; she has not been protected by the system. Mel is able to send her threatening letters from prison and run a crime ring that targets Gwen. When a body is found, she and her children face questions.
This section introduces the novel’s main themes, including Misogyny and Crime, particularly how deeply sexist attitudes influence serial killers like Mel to exclusively target women, and how Gwen becomes a target for rampant, uncritical sexism simply because she’s a woman whom people assume is also evil.
