Those Girls

In the summer of 1997, three sisters flee the small Canadian town of Littlefield, near the Alberta border, after killing their father. Jess, fourteen years old, narrates the first part of the novel. Her older sisters are Dani, almost eighteen, and Courtney, sixteen. Their mother died in a car accident years earlier. Their father, Roger Campbell, turned to heavy drinking and regularly beats them. The sisters do manual labor on a cattle farm while their father works on oil rigs.

When Roger comes home drunk one night, he discovers Courtney has been involved with a married man. Enraged, he burns her jaw with a hot frying pan and begins drowning her in the toilet. Dani grabs the family rifle but freezes. Jess seizes the gun and fires twice, killing him. The sisters bury the body under a pig trough, sink his truck in a quarry, and scrub the house clean. The local sergeant visits and inspects the house but does not press further. They leave a note claiming they are visiting a relative and drive away in the night.

Their plan is to reach Vancouver, but they need money for fake identification. On the way to Cash Creek, a small town in British Columbia, the truck's water pump fails. Brian and Gavin Luxton, brothers in their early twenties, stop to help and offer the sisters work on their cattle ranch while Brian orders a replacement part. The sisters give fake names and accept. Over the next few days, the brothers act friendly, but their behavior turns aggressive. When the sisters try to leave, the brothers attack, overpower all three, and drive them to a remote abandoned warehouse. Over five days, the brothers hold them captive and rape Courtney, Dani, and eventually Jess.

Jess engineers an escape. She persuades Brian to untie her, grabs his rifle, and clubs him unconscious when it jams. She starts his truck to lure Gavin outside, then slips back inside, where Dani clears the jammed round from the chamber. Jess shoots Gavin in the shoulder, and the sisters flee in Brian's truck. In town, Allen, the local pub owner, takes them in and contacts his friend Patrick, a former convict who runs a boxing gym for at-risk youth in Vancouver. Allen's son Owen drives the sisters to a bus station, where they disguise themselves and board separately.

Patrick and his wife Karen set the sisters up in an apartment above the Phoenix Boxing and Training gym. Patrick obtains fake birth certificates: Jess becomes Jamie, Dani becomes Dallas, and Courtney becomes Crystal, all surnamed Caldwell. Dallas thrives as a boxer and fitness instructor. Crystal has depression and struggles with substance use. Jamie works at the gym and a hotel, earning her GED, a high-school equivalency diploma. They never report their assault. Three months after escaping, Jamie realizes she is pregnant from Brian's rape. At sixteen weeks along, an abortion would be significantly more complicated and risky. She carries the pregnancy to term but, after giving birth, cannot give the child up. She names the baby Skylar, inventing a story about a boy named Billy Wilson to explain the absent father.

Part Two jumps to July 2015 and shifts to Skylar's perspective. Now seventeen, Skylar is an aspiring DJ who works at the gym. Crystal still cycles between charm and self-destruction. When Crystal's new boyfriend chokes her during sex, she has a severe breakdown, locking herself in her bathroom with a gun and cocaine, convinced her past attackers are coming for her. Jamie and Dallas calm her, and Jamie tells Skylar a partial truth: that men in Cash Creek once "got rough" with them. Crystal later admits they were held captive for five days and wishes they had killed their attackers.

Crystal soon disappears. Skylar searches her apartment and finds internet searches for Cash Creek and cattle ranches. Convinced Crystal has returned there, Skylar lies to Jamie and drives to Cash Creek alone. A motel clerk confirms a woman matching Crystal's description checked in under the name Courtney Campbell. A hitchhiker steals Skylar's wallet, phone, and laptop, stranding her. She takes a cash job at the Luxton Cattle Ranch, where she meets Brian and notices his dark eyes and curved pinkie fingers, both identical to hers. She realizes with horror that Brian is her biological father.

Searching for Crystal, Skylar breaks into Gavin's house and is caught. Gavin drags her to a locked upstairs bedroom where Crystal is tied to the bedpost, naked, gagged, and covered in bruises. Crystal has been Gavin's captive since he overpowered her after she tried to shoot him. Gavin recognizes Skylar's resemblance to Brian's family and deduces her parentage. He binds Skylar to the opposite bedpost.

Part Three alternates between Jamie's and Skylar's perspectives. Jamie discovers Skylar is missing and drives to Cash Creek with Dallas. They file a missing persons report with Sergeant McPhail, revealing for the first time that the brothers raped them eighteen years earlier. McPhail investigates but cannot obtain a search warrant without direct evidence. Jamie and Dallas stake out Gavin's property and hear sounds from inside the house but are spotted and forced to flee.

Inside the locked bedroom, Skylar smashes a beer bottle Gavin left behind, uses a glass shard to saw through her bindings, and frees Crystal. They cut through Crystal's rope overnight and reset the scene to appear still bound. Before they can act, Brian arrives and orders Gavin to kill the captives immediately. Gavin turns the handgun on Brian instead, shooting him in the stomach during a struggle. Skylar pulls free and runs with Crystal, but at the front door, Crystal shoves Skylar outside and locks the door behind her, staying inside alone. Through the window, Skylar watches Crystal grab a kitchen knife and charge at Gavin.

Jamie and Dallas arrive armed and break in through a window. Crystal lies dead on the kitchen floor, shot by Gavin. Gavin lies dead beside her with Crystal's knife in his chest. Crystal sacrifices herself to give Skylar time to escape. Brian, wounded, tries to flee but Dallas shoots him as police arrive.

Back in Vancouver, Skylar begins counseling. Jamie reveals the full truth: Brian is her biological father, their real names are Jessica, Danielle, and Courtney Campbell, and they are from Littlefield. Skylar is furious about the years of deception but gradually reconciles with her mother. She finds connection with Aaron, a boy at the gym whose father is in prison for violence, who assures her that having a violent father does not define her.

When a body is found on a farm in Littlefield and identified as Roger Campbell, Jamie faces one final reckoning. The bullet in his skull matches the caliber of an unregistered rifle recovered during the Cash Creek investigation. Jamie tells Skylar the truth about shooting their father, then goes to the police with Dallas. They claim Courtney killed Roger while they were out. Because Courtney is dead and cannot be questioned, the officer accepts the account.

In the epilogue, narrated by Dallas, the survivors wade into the ocean at dawn and release a thousand origami cranes, which in Japanese tradition carry souls to paradise, along with Crystal's ashes. Dallas, who has carried rage her entire life, cries for the first time in years and allows herself to imagine a future she had never thought possible. She reflects that Skylar is "the best part of all of us," echoing the words their mother once said about her three daughters.