The Last of the Moon Girls

“We do need to go home from time to time, but only to remind us why we left in the first place, so we can get clear on what we do want.”

This develops the character of Luc. He runs his late mother’s company, Chenier Fragrances, and benefits from Lizzy’s supernatural talent with scents, but he doesn’t see the connection between the Moon Girl Farm’s rural apothecary and his sophisticated New York fashion business. As a New Yorker, he sees a farm in New Hampshire as a place to visit and then leave. Being an urban success is his goal, and it is one that he wants Lizzy to embrace as her goal as well.

“Everyone’s got a right to go looking for themselves, but once they manage it, they should come back home and deal with what’s past, look things squarely in the eye.”

This is Evvie’s thought on returning home, which can be contrasted with Luc’s in the previous quote. Evvie sees leaving home as a rite of passage rather than a long-term goal. She wants Lizzy to follow the family tradition, developing The Tension Between Tradition and Personal Choice.

“The woods had been her temple, sacred in a way no stone edifice could ever be.”

This develops the spirituality of the Moon women, what they call being on the Path. In contrasting the woods with the “stone edifice” of a church, the novel sets up a tension between the Christianity that dominates the town and the animistic faith of the Moon family—in which everything in nature, including plants and nonhuman animals, has its own spirit. Lizzy’s faith comes from nature. To worship in a structure created by humans, rather than the divine, is to put walls between herself and the spirits of plants and animals.

“Have you ever thought those girls might rest easier if someone caught whoever hurt them? All this time they’ve been hovering between this world and the next, waiting for someone to figure out what really happened? And your gran—she might just feel like she’s got some unfinished business herself, things tethering her to this place, instead of where she’s meant to be.”

This quote from Evvie develops the symbolism of ghosts as avatars of The Ongoing Influence of the Past. The spirits of Heather, Darcy, and Althea linger because they want closure about the murders. Lizzy senses this when she goes to the pond where Heather’s and Darcy’s corpses were found.

“Bluebells…for truth.”

This is the beginning of the second entry in Althea’s Book of Remembrances, which develops the theme of emotional and herbal healing. Althea wants Lizzy to live her truth, even if that means breaking with family traditions. Althea also wants Lizzy to discover the truth about the murders so that her spirit can rest.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

This is a quote from Exodus 22:18 in the Bible. It is weaponized by Dennis against the Moon family. They don’t identify as witches but as people on the Path, and their faith forbids them from harming any living thing.

“This place is in your blood, little girl. This shop, and this soil, and that house—it’s all part of you. So is caring for people. That’s all healing is—trusting the magick, and sharing a little of it when you can. Your gran knew that.”

Evvie says this to Lizzy when Lizzy decides to make more of Althea’s soap for a customer. It develops the theme of the tension between tradition and personal choice. Lizzy upholds the tradition of making healing remedies. It is a positive experience for her, so she chooses to follow it.

“Like Jacob Marley and his chains, we’re tied to this world by our regrets.”

Andrew says this to Lizzy when she asks if he believes in ghosts, developing the symbolism of ghosts. It is an allusion to Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; Jacob is one of the ghosts that Ebenezer Scrooge sees. The way that Jacob influences Scrooge to become a better person can be compared to how Lizzy is influenced by Althea.

“No one knows who killed Heather and Darcy Gilman, Dennis. Not you. Not the police. Not even Lizzy.”

Andrew says this to Dennis when he baselessly accuses the Moon family of killing Heather and Darcy. It is ironic because Dennis does know who killed the Gilman girls: He did, with his brother and father. This irony foreshadows how Dennis’s guilt will come to be known.

“I was like the guy in that Poe story, hearing that heart beating under his floorboards, terrified I’d be found out, knowing what people would think when I was.”

When Rhanna explains that she saw the corpses of Heather and Darcy in the pond because of her psychic gift, she compares the experience to “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. She didn’t draw her vision, like she did her other visions, because Althea was suspected in the murder. Not being able to process it through art, it weighs on Rhanna’s conscience as murder weighs on the conscience of the narrator of Poe’s story.

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know. It was just a fact, like the sun coming up in the morning. There’s a light inside you, Lizzy. Althea had it too. And your mother. It’s what makes you a Moon—that light.”

Here, Andrew describes how he perceives the Moon family’s psychic gifts. They are a natural phenomenon, like sunrises. They are also a positive phenomenon; Davis draws on light imagery’s association with goodness to convey this.

“I waited twenty years for that kiss. I’ll wait another twenty if that’s what it takes.”

This quote develops Andrew’s character. He is in love with Lizzy and willing to wait however long it takes to be with her. His love borders on obsession; he was unable to be in a serious relationship in college because of his enduring love of Lizzy.

“She looked so beautiful in the moonlight, so cool and still, and so very far away. But then she’d always had a talent for detachment, an ability to hold herself apart from the world around her—and from him.”

Here, Andrew’s thoughts develop Lizzy’s character. She has rejected romantic intimacy because of the family tradition of Moon women not getting married. Andrew compares her to the moon, playing on her last name and her family’s connection with nature.

“It’s always been you, Lizzy. Since the day I saw you coming out of the woods with your hair full of leaves, like something from a fairy tale. You didn’t say a word. You just stood staring at me. And that was it. I was in love with the girl next door.”

Andrew’s confession of love leads to him having sex with Lizzy for the first time. This quote expands on quote 4. When Lizzy comes out of the woods, she is coming out of her sacred space. Andrew loves her connection to nature and her supernatural qualities.

“That Helen was afraid, couldn’t be denied. She’d caught the faint tinge of urine on her breath—an ammonia-like odor she’d always registered as fear.”

This develops the symbolism of scents. To Lizzy, this particular smell represents fear. Through her psychic gift, she understands Helen’s fear of Dennis and suspects that he abuses her.

“A man does what he has to.”

This quote is repeated on pages 332 and 347. Later in the novel, Helen reveals that this is what Dennis’s father said to him when ordering him to kill Heather. At this point, in Chapter 39, Dennis says it when he plans to kill Lizzy. Lizzy remembers it after the fact, driving home its importance: It is a creed of toxic masculinity that is passed down through generations, the antithesis of the creed of care passed down among the Moon women.

“This isn’t an episode of Bewitched. The happily-ever-after thing—the honeymoon, the kids, the Disney vacations—that’s for other people. Normal people.”

Lizzy says this to Rhanna to explain why she doesn’t want to be with Andrew: because of their family’s unconventional tradition of not getting married. Davis uses an allusion to an old television show about generations of witches. In Bewitched, the comedy revolves around a witch marrying a man without magical powers.

“She could feel them around her, like the portraits on the parlor wall, a collective presence reminding her that once upon a time they had lived here, and left their mark. They had defied convention, weathered the elements, wrested a living from a rocky patch of soil, created art, raised daughters, healed generations of Salem Creek’s sick, and no doubt endured all manner of whispers before finally giving their ashes to the ground. The Moons stuck.”

When Lizzy is determined to leave the farm and Andrew behind, she packs up the Moon women’s journals, but she still feels the women’s presence, which is part of the reason why she ends up staying. Lizzy connects to their energy more than to the land or buildings on it. Lizzy’s reflections about the continued presence of these deceased women illustrate the ongoing presence of the past.

“It would mean stepping into the light, being seen for who and what she was—or at least who Andrew thought she was—the girl with the light inside her.”

After reading Althea’s confession about her lost love, Lizzy realizes that she can be both normal and abnormal. She can break the family tradition and marry Andrew because he accepts her family’s psychic gifts. He describes them as light, again drawing on the imagery of light as positive. She can follow the family tradition of healing the sick instead of working at the perfume company in New York, all with a supportive husband by her side.

“I let someone else write my story.”

This is from Althea’s last entry in the Book of Remembrances. Her story is told in The Book of Althea, her magical journal, but it is dictated by family tradition, developing the theme of following and breaking family traditions. She encourages Lizzy to break the tradition of not marrying because she regretted not doing so herself.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder how things might have been if I’d followed my heart instead of the rules. We’ve been taught that to love is to give ourselves away. But that’s wrong. We lose nothing when we love. It’s only in refusing to love that we pay, and lose the most precious part of ourselves. That’s why we’ve come—to love. Because that’s all there is. It’s all love—and it’s all magick.”

Here, Althea challenges her ancestor Sabine, who made the rule that Moon women should not get married. Love is the most important thing in life, and love is a form of magick, Althea argues. This develops what being on the Path looks like: It can include being in a regular marriage.

“Althea hadn’t lived long enough to see her married, but the mingled scents of lavender and bergamot had filled the air as they spoke their vows.”

This passage develops the symbolism of scents and illustrates the ongoing influence of the past. While Althea’s spirit is pleased that Lizzy solved the murder, she sticks around to see Lizzy follow her heart and marry Andrew. This is business that she must see finished before her spirit can move on.

“She had borrowed an embroidered hankie from Evvie, and carried her grandmother’s cherished copy of Rumi’s The Book of Love, as her something blue.”

Lizzy doesn’t take the Book of Remembrances or a magical journal to her wedding. She brings Althea’s favorite book: a collection of poems by the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi. This develops the motif of books. Not only are the books written by Moon women important, but Moon women also believe in the power of reading diversely.