The Storm (2025) is a thriller by Rachel Hawkins that blends a Southern Gothic atmosphere with the documentary style of the true-crime genre. The novel is set in the hurricane-prone town of St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama. As Geneva Corliss struggles to keep her family’s historic Rosalie Inn financially afloat, a lucrative booking from writer August Fletcher and his subject, the infamous Lo Bailey, initially seems to offer her a lifeline. However, 40 years earlier, Lo was accused of murdering a politician’s son during a hurricane, and August’s investigation into the cold case now unearths long-buried secrets that connect Geneva’s own family to the crime. The novel explores themes including The Unreliability of Personal and Public Histories, The Destructive Power of Generational Secrets, and Reclaiming Agency Through Morally Ambiguous Choices.

Hawkins is a New York Times best-selling author who transitioned from writing popular young-adult novels to penning adult suspense novels such as The Wife Upstairs, Reckless Girls, and The Villa. Raised in Alabama, Hawkins draws on her Southern roots to create vivid settings, and her stories often feature Gothic elements, complicated female relationships, and secrets connected to specific, atmospheric locations. The Storm, which employs a quasi-epistolary format and incorporates fictional newspaper articles, book excerpts, and letters, is designed to mimic the fragmented evidence presented in true-crime podcasts and documentaries. As a result, Hawkins implicitly challenges the reader to become an investigator and piece together a definitive version of the past from the characters’ competing accounts.

This guide refers to the 2025 St. Martin’s Press edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, child death, sexual violence and harassment, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The narrative opens with excerpts that establish the setting of St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama, a town defined by its long and deadly history with hurricanes. In a 1996 magazine article, local shopkeeper Beth-Anne Bailey recounts the destructive power of storms like Hurricane Marie in 1984. A 1986 newspaper clipping details the mistrial of Beth-Anne’s daughter, Gloria “Lo” Bailey, for the murder of politician Landon Fitzroy (who was having an affair with teenage Lo) during that same hurricane. Decades later, in April 2025, a financially struggling Lo emails a literary agent about podcasts, which leads to a collaboration with writer August Fletcher on a memoir about her life and the murder scandal.

In June 2025, Geneva Corliss is struggling to keep her family’s historic Rosalie Inn afloat, facing mounting debt and the cost of care for her aging mother, Ellen Chambers Corliss. Geneva’s only support is her best friend and assistant manager, Edie Vargas. A financial lifeline appears when August Fletcher requests a long-term stay at the inn to write his book, offering to pay double the rate. He specifically wants to research the death of Landon Fitzroy during Hurricane Marie in 1984.

August and Lo Bailey arrive at the Rosalie Inn in July. Geneva is struck by Lo’s beauty and learns that she was a childhood friend of her mother, Ellen. Edie, however, is uncharacteristically cold and distant toward Lo. August shocks Geneva by revealing that they chose to stay at the Rosalie Inn because it’s where Landon’s body was found—a detail that Geneva has never heard. During a visit to her mother’s care facility, Geneva mentions Lo’s name, and Ellen, though mostly unresponsive, has a noticeable physical reaction. Later, Lo reveals a secret from her shared past with Ellen: the fact that Edie is actually their childhood friend Frieda Mason.

Geneva confronts Edie, who admits her real identity. She explains that she changed her name to escape the tragedy of her past, as her parents and brother died during Hurricane Audrey in 1977. (They had been searching for her after she, Lo, and Ellen lied about a sleepover.) Now, Edie blames Lo’s recklessness for the tragedy and tells Geneva that she is certain Lo murdered Landon. Soon after this conversation, August interviews Geneva and reveals that Edie, as Frieda, was the prosecution’s star witness at Lo’s trial. She testified that she saw Lo and Landon fighting and had previously heard Lo threaten to kill him. August then outlines the inconsistencies in Lo’s story, making Geneva doubt her innocence.

As a storm rolls in, Lo and Edie have a tense confrontation in the lobby, with Lo accusing Edie of lying at her trial. That night, Geneva returns to the inn to find Edie unconscious on a dark side porch, bleeding from a severe head injury that mirrors Landon’s. Edie is placed in a medically induced coma, and Geneva suspects that Lo attacked her. August comforts Geneva, and they share a kiss, but he later tells her that he is no longer writing Lo’s version of the story and is now seeking the truth. 

The next day, after studying Ellen’s box of clippings and conducting his own research, August shows Geneva a photograph of Landon’s sister, Camile, who is her exact double, and reveals that Landon is Geneva’s biological father. The timeline of her parents’ marriage and her birth confirms this possibility. Later, Geneva discovers a silver bracelet on her mother’s wrist engraved with the letter “L,” a gift from Landon to Ellen.

As Hurricane Lizzie approaches St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva processes the truth of her parentage, realizing that her mother’s hidden box of newspaper clippings about the scandal was a secret memorial to Landon. The inn empties, leaving only Geneva, Lo, and August. On the night the hurricane is set to make landfall, Geneva demands that August and Lo leave, but the confrontation is interrupted when Lo rips the plywood from a lobby window to face the storm.

In the ensuing chaos, it is revealed that August is also Landon’s child, the result of another affair. August sought out Lo to uncover the truth about his father’s death and get revenge. Lo confesses that she killed Landon after discovering that he was cheating on her with Ellen and that Ellen was pregnant.

As Hurricane Lizzie slams into the inn, a tree limb shatters the window. Enraged, August attacks Lo. To stop him, Geneva hits August with a hammer that she finds on the floor. August grabs the hammer and turns on Lo again. Geneva and Lo push him away, and he falls backward into the jagged glass of the broken window frame. A shard of glass slices his throat, killing him instantly. The roof of the Rosalie Inn is then torn off by the storm. 

An interlude reveals Ellen’s written account of Landon’s murder, which she kept secret. After Landon revealed a cruel plan to take their baby and raise it with his wife, Alison (who couldn’t have children herself), Ellen struck the first blow with a small anchor. Lo, who had arrived to confront them, delivered the final blows to protect Ellen and then took the blame.

Five months after the Hurricane Lizzie, the Rosalie Inn is being repaired. August’s death has been ruled a storm-related accident, but his manuscript, found on his laptop, has leaked the story of his and Geneva’s parentage to the press. Edie has recovered from her injuries, which were inflicted by August, not Lo. Now living at the inn with Geneva, she reveals the final secret of that night in 1984, explaining that she witnessed the murder and moved Landon’s body down the beach to protect Ellen. Her testimony against Lo was a deliberate misdirection to draw all suspicion away from her friend. 

On the beach, the three women—Geneva, Lo, and Edie—build the foundations of a fragile peace. Geneva throws her mother’s bracelet into the ocean, accepting her family’s legacy and her new role as a keeper of the town’s secrets.