Tourist Season

Harper Starling is the protagonist of the novel. She is 29 years old in the narrative present. She lives in the coastal Maine town of Cape Carnage, where she moved four years prior to the novel’s start. The narrative later reveals that Harper Starling is not, in fact, her true name or identity. The real Harper Starling “was presumed dead when her car crashed into the sea after a hit-and-run accident in Maryland four years ago” (230). Harper’s real name is Autumn Bower, but she shed this name and identity after undergoing excruciating trauma: She and her boyfriend Adam Cunningham were living in their van and documenting the experience online when they were kidnapped by a killer named Harvey Mead. Harvey imprisoned the couple in a dank cellar, where he tortured and killed Adam. Autumn escaped, but she remains haunted by these events in the present. She ran into Harper and her friends amid the Maryland hit-and-run, killed Harper, took her identity, and relocated to Cape Carnage. Her new identity has granted her the illusion of empowerment and strength; she thinks she has shed her fragile, wounded nature and adopted the steely, heartless identity of a killer.