63 pages • 2-hour read
The Lake of Lost Girls
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5-Interlude 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual harassment, substance use, death, graphic violence, and gender discrimination.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Jessica”
In November 1998, Jess calls her father in tears as she adjusts to life at college. She and Daisy then learn that Tammy has been missing for four days. While Daisy and another student, Kara, eagerly speculate about Tammy possibly running away with Dr. Daniels, who has frequent affairs with his students, Jess suggests that Tammy might be following the band Phish, as she was known to do. The girls plan a hall party during Tammy’s absence. In the cafeteria, Jess joins her Pi Gamma Delta sorority pledge sisters, reflecting on how her academic performance is declining as her social life expands. A flashback reveals Jess’s close relationship with her father, who comforted her after her mother criticized her for getting a B on a test.
A few days later, Jess receives an F on an essay she wrote at the last minute but nevertheless chooses to attend a Sigma Kappa Phi fraternity party. Feeling watched and drinking heavily, Jess momentarily hallucinates seeing Tammy before an attractive student distracts her. They spend hours talking upstairs, and he walks her home. Outside her dorm, they witness her pledge sister Phoebe Baker in a car with Dr. Daniels, engaged in a romantic encounter. This disturbs Jess, who earlier saw Dr. Daniels with his wife and young children. The boy, who reveals that he knew Phoebe in high school, kisses Jess before leaving. Only as he walks away does Jess realize she never learned his name.
Interlude 6 Summary
A social media post from Brenda Givens in Charlotte shows her continuing devotion to her missing friend Tammy. “This feels like yesterday. I miss you, Tammy! If you’re out there, know that I love you!” (81) she writes, adding hashtags “#spreadheads #missing,” which reference the Widespread Panic band that Tammy reportedly followed. The post has received 30 likes and 3 comments.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Lindsey”
In the present day, Lindsey is overwhelmed by the public attention surrounding Jess’s case. True crime enthusiasts, including YouTubers and podcasters, are investigating the disappearance, causing Lindsey significant distress and making her grateful for the paperwork that requires her attention at work. That evening, she meets Ryan for a walk in the park, and he reveals information about Dr. Daniels’s affairs with students, including Tammy and Phoebe.
Ryan believes Dr. Daniels might be connected to all the disappearances, mentioning that prior to working at Southern State, he left a position at a community college in Tennessee under suspicious circumstances. While they’re talking, Lindsey receives a call from her mother with news from Lieutenant Higgins: The remains found at Doll’s Eye Lake are not Jess’s. Almost simultaneously, Ryan receives a call from his police source revealing the same information. Ryan informs Lindsey that the remains belong to Tammy.
Interlude 7 Summary: “Atlantic Coast Gazette”
A newspaper article dated Wednesday, December 9, 1998, reports on Phoebe Baker’s recent disappearance from Southern State University, following Tammy Estep’s disappearance six weeks earlier. The article notes that Tammy’s disappearance wasn’t initially treated as suspicious because friends reported she planned to follow the band Widespread Panic. It mentions circulating rumors about both missing girls having relationships with a “reputable member of staff” (94), though university president Dr. Hamilton firmly denies these “outlandish allegations,” defending the unnamed professor as “highly respected” and “well regarded by his colleagues and students” (94). The administration maintains that it is working with local authorities to locate the missing students.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Jessica”
In December 1998, Southern State University is “in chaos” following the disappearance of Phoebe, who failed to show up to a Pi Gamma Delta pledge meeting during which the sisters speculated about Phoebe’s whereabouts. One sister, Blair, shocked everyone by revealing that she once caught Phoebe with Dr. Daniels in her dorm room, and Jess made a judgmental comment about girls like Phoebe and Tammy seeking attention. Five days later, Phoebe was declared a missing person, the police immediately treating it as a “potential crime” due to pressure from her parents. All Pi Gamma pledges were interviewed, but none had substantial information.
Meanwhile, Jess attends a fraternity party, where she participates in a keg stand and stays out later than Daisy. The next day, hungover, she joins her sorority sisters, who are discussing their police interviews; Blair and Daisy both revealed Dr. Daniels’s relationships with the missing students. When Daisy expresses fear that someone might be targeting students, Jess angrily dismisses her concerns. Later, Jess meets the attractive student from the fraternity party in the cafeteria; this time, he introduces himself as Ryan McKay, and they exchange flirtatious banter before he gets her phone number. On her drive home for Christmas break, Jess detours to Doll’s Eye Lake, a reservoir where she used to fish with her father. There, she notices a yellow 1965 Boss 429 Mustang—a car the novel has previously confirmed her father owns—parked beyond the tree line. She sees two people inside, which fills her with rage and conflicting emotions of “hate and a desperate sort of love” (108).
Interlude 8 Summary: “Ten Seconds to Vanish: The Unsolved Disappearance of Jessica Fadley: Episode 5”
Stella and Rachel discuss receiving a grateful message from Stephanie Baker, Phoebe’s sister, thanking them for bringing attention to her sister’s case. They also mention receiving threatening messages demanding that they stop their investigation. The hosts then begin discussing Phoebe Baker, describing her as “sweet, studious, quiet-as-a-mouse” before revealing that she was involved with the same married professor as Tammy was (111). They cannot disclose the man’s name but hint that he might have been involved in the disappearances.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Lindsey”
Lieutenant Jane Higgins meets with the Fadley family to discuss the investigation. Ben expresses anger about how the police have handled his daughter’s case over the last 24 years, while Lieutenant Higgins explains that they are using modern technology to search Doll’s Eye Lake and surrounding areas. Lindsey reveals that she knows the remains belong to Tammy and that she was killed by blunt force trauma and wrapped in a blanket (details Ryan revealed to her during their last conversation). Lieutenant Higgins is disturbed by Lindsey’s insider knowledge but explains that she believes the disappearances were not “random crimes” but rather the work of someone who knew the victims. She assures the family that finding Tammy means the case has been moved to active status, placing significant resources at the detective’s disposal.
After the police leave, Lindsey searches through boxes of Jess’s belongings in her preserved bedroom. She finds a photo album showing Jess’s college life and family pictures that reveal the close relationship between Jess and their father, including trips to Doll’s Eye Lake and Carina’s Custard Stand. Lindsey reflects on her own distant relationship with her father, feeling jealous of the bond he shared with Jess. Inside a hidden cavity in Jess’s closet wall, Lindsey discovers documents showing Jess was struggling academically with Cs and Ds, had been suspended from her sorority, and was auditing Dr. Daniels’s statistics class. Most shockingly, she finds romantic photographs of Jess with Ryan at Doll’s Eye Lake, a connection he has deliberately hidden from Lindsey.
Interlude 9 Summary
A social media post from Stephanie Baker expresses her ongoing grief and frustration about her sister Phoebe’s disappearance 24 years earlier. She firmly rejects the theory that Phoebe ran away, insisting “Phoebe would NEVER do that!” and lamenting that police never took her parents’ concerns seriously (127). Stephanie thanks the Ten Seconds to Vanish podcast for bringing renewed attention to her sister’s case and vows to uncover the truth, writing, “I’ve had my suspicions for 24 years and if it’s the last thing I do, I will find out the thruth [sic]!” (127). The post has received 340 reactions, 11 comments, and 7 shares.
Chapter 5-Interlude 9 Analysis
The novel’s dual timeline narrative structure serves as more than a suspense mechanism; it uses perspective to reveal the complexities of identity and memory. Jess’s 1998 narration presents a young woman deliberately constructing a new persona, rejecting her studious past to embrace reckless behaviors: “I knew that this wasn’t me, not really. And somewhere, deep down, the old Jess was shouting at me to stop. That I was ruining everything. It was time for her to shut up for good” (99). This self-aware transformation underscores both Jess’s agency and her powerlessness amid her reinvention; she chooses to suppress the “old Jess” but still feels that she is losing a fundamental part of herself. Relatedly, it foreshadows her disappearance—the ultimate silencing of both versions of herself.
Jess’s transformation also touches on the related themes of The Corrosive Nature of Secrets and Deception and Exposing the Duality Between Appearance and Reality. The hidden cavity in Jess’s wall containing evidence of her academic struggles becomes a metaphor for the concealed aspects of her identity: What appears to be a solid, comprehensible surface contains unseen depths. Jess’s conscious rejection of her previous, responsible identity initially appears to be typical college experimentation, but there are hints that something deeper is driving her toward self-destruction. Her aggressive criticism of girls like Phoebe and Tammy (“Girls like Phoebe and Tammy like the attention” [96]) suggests that she is projecting, as she herself seeks similar validation while outwardly condemning it. This forms part of a broader pattern of internalized misogyny that drives Jess’s actions. As the novel eventually reveals, the knowledge of her father’s illicit affairs with young women torments her, yet her love for him prevents her from laying the blame solely at his feet; instead, she lashes out at the women, unraveling herself in the process.
The contrasting public personas and private behaviors of multiple characters—Dr. Daniels as respected professor/potential predator, Jess as studious daughter/wild college student, Ryan as objective journalist/former boyfriend—establish deception as a systemic pattern within the community. Indeed, the failure of institutions such as the college and the police to take the students’ disappearances seriously suggests the widespread prioritization of reputation over truth and justice. The symbolism surrounding Doll’s Eye Lake supports this notion. The lake takes its name from a poisonous plant with a distinctive appearance, establishing it as a site of deceptive beauty and hidden danger: “[T]he berries turned bright white with a black spot in the middle, making them look exactly like creepy little eyeballs. Most people had no idea the pretty plant was, in fact, incredibly poisonous” (106). This symbolism extends to the lake’s function as a repository of secrets, where bodies are rumored to be hidden. In this context, the discovery of Tammy’s remains transforms the lake from a place of local mythology to a concrete crime scene, reflecting the novel’s thematic progression from rumor to revelation.
Many of those revelations concern Jess’s relationship with her father, which was, significantly, both formed and fractured at the lake. Jess’s memories of fishing with her father initially appear tender: “Dad would bring me to the lake when I was little. We’d take our small orange paddle boat out to the center, fishing gear propped between us” (106). However, this seemingly idyllic relationship contains troubling undertones. The older Jess’s complicated emotional response at the lake—“Rage ripped through my insides like a wildfire. Hate and a desperate sort of love warred against each other in my heart” (108)—suggests her sense of profound betrayal that her father would choose this symbolic location for a liaison with a woman as young as Jess herself. The parallel revelation in Lindsey’s narrative—“The jealousy, the feeling of inadequacy, was always there in the back of my mind. And it didn’t stop me from missing what I could have had if it weren’t for my sister” (123)—positions complex father-daughter relationships as central to both timeline narratives. This demonstrates how trauma echoes through generations, with Lindsey’s identity shaped by Jess’s absence and her father’s emotional withdrawal. It is also another instance of internalized misogyny, with Lindsey blaming Jess for her father’s distance in much the same way Jess blamed his young girlfriends.
The narrative continues to employ dramatic irony as a literary technique to develop suspense and thematic depth. When Lindsey discovers Ryan’s connection to Jess, readers have already witnessed their meeting from Jess’s perspective. This technique extends to the investigation itself; Lieutenant Higgins acknowledges past investigative failures when she states, “I am finding links that investigators at the time didn’t” (118). This meta-commentary on investigative methodology reflects the broader theme of Grappling with the Unreliability of Memory and Perception by suggesting that facts alone prove insufficient without proper context and connection, not least because official records and personal recollections are so often incomplete or unreliable. The novel suggests that only through reconciling these fragmented narratives can characters achieve complete understanding. Lieutenant Higgins says as much, even as she admits to institutional failures: “There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle” (117), she observes, implying that those pieces need to be worked into a coherent whole.
Unlock all 63 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs