Tourist Season

Lancaster Manor, Arthur’s estate and Harper’s home, is a symbol of safety and security. Harper has lived on the grounds for four years, ever since arriving in Cape Carnage. Arthur Lancaster owns and resides on the property and offered Harper lodging here when she moved to town. He also eventually lets her move into his late daughter’s cottage and take over the landscaping responsibilities, representing Harper’s increased connection to her new community. Harper thus derives a sense of belonging and comfort from this setting. She knows Arthur will protect her because his “family owns half of the businesses in and around town” (87). His power, money, and residence shield her from onlookers, busybodies, and detectives alike, and over those four years, she has convinced herself that she can just put her past away and move seamlessly into Cape Carnage.

When Sam and Vinny start flying their drones over Lancaster Manor, they threaten Harper’s safety and security. Harper normally has no qualms about performing illicit activities out in the open when she is at home on the manor grounds. She will kidnap, torture, and murder people in the daylight, shoving their bodies into her wood chipper and burying their remains thereafter. However, once the drone arrives, Harper must be more circumspect—she is forced to hide aspects of her life, knowing that even Arthur Lancaster’s reputation can’t fully protect her from the world beyond—and specifically, from her past. The meaning of Lancaster Manor shifts for Harper over the course of the novel, as its safety is breached and she begins to understand The Importance of Resolving the Past for Self-Reinvention.

Harper’s  charm bracelet is a symbol of her past, her loss, and her grief. The engraving on the charm signifies her and Adam’s relationship: The  stands for “Adam” and “Autumn,” and the BC stands for “Bower” and “Cunningham.” The engraving is written as an equation, implying that Adam and Autumn had chemistry and were indelibly linked.

The charm resurfaces throughout the novel, and with each appearance, Harper is forced to remember her late boyfriend’s gruesome fate, the trauma she suffered, and the life she left behind. The bracelet’s recurrence throughout the novel also reinforces the novel’s theme of the Healing From Past Trauma Together. Harper has compartmentalized the events of her past, but they have not gone away. The past continues to rear its head in the present as long as Harper tries to deny it, and only with Nolan’s help does she begin to see that she has to confront the tragedy behind the charm bracelet in order to move past it.

Nolan’s bag is a symbol of his identity and its foundations in his past. Nolan is so attached to the bag because it contains his scrapbook, his murder weapons, and murder trophies. It represents the person he has tried to become in the wake of his late brother Billy’s death. He has attempted to stave off grief by embracing anger and violence instead of forgiveness. The bag and its contents represent this new, chosen identity.

Because of the bag’s importance to Nolan’s sense of himself, when Harper takes it from him, Nolan feels as if she has stolen a vital part of him. Harper also feels that she can control Nolan while she is still in possession of it. Once she and Nolan become close, she returns the bag because she no longer needs leverage over him. She is allowing Nolan to be whoever he may be without trying to manipulate, threaten, blackmail, or hurt him. In fact, she supports his efforts to reshape his identity, emphasizing the theme of healing from past trauma together.