45 pages • 1-hour read
We Are All Guilty Here
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence, graphic violence, illness, and death.
The Fragile Veneer of Small-Town Life
The novel’s North Falls setting toys with the closed circle of suspects and locked room thriller tropes to explore how small-town living can create interpersonal tension and drama. The entirety of We Are All Guilty Here takes place “within the 190-acre city limits of North Falls” (16). The town is located “in the south-western part of Georgia” and is the smallest town in Clifton County (16). As Emmy struggles to solve the Broken Angels Case, her investigation exposes the fragile veneer of small-town life.
The town’s insular setting creates conflict. While all of the North Falls townspeople are intimate with each other and don’t easily trust outsiders, their closeness also creates corruption. Since the North Falls community members are loyal to each other, they keep one another’s secrets—even when these secrets surround violence, exploitation, abuse, and murder. When Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker go missing, the North Falls townspeople initially bond together to find the disappeared teenagers. Over time, however, they begin to turn on each other. Even Hannah—Emmy Clifton’s best friend—turns on Emmy and blames her and her father for failing to save Madison. Meanwhile, the perpetrators cover one another’s tracks or frame their family and friends to get away with their heinous crimes.
On its surface, North Falls appears to be an idyllic community defined by Southern charm, holiday celebrations, and neighborly love. Over the course of the novel, however, the Broken Angels Case and Paisley Walker’s disappearance reveals that every single person in North Falls has been keeping secrets about who they are and what they’re capable of. Even seemingly stand-up characters like Gerald Clifton and Virgil Ingram turn out to have egregious faults. Gerald was once an angry person with an alcohol dependency who cast out his daughter Jude when she was grieving her twin brother’s death. He not only demanded she leave town, but informed everyone that she was dead. Virgil also appears to be dependable and trustworthy, but ends up being a pedophile and murderer. Meanwhile, Emmy and her colleagues’ investigation reveals that other seemingly upstanding citizens like Walton Huntsinger, Elijah Walker, and Dale Loudermilk have dark sides, too. All of the characters’ true identities are concealed by thin veils, which gradually tear by the novel’s end.
Even characters like Jude and Emmy have fraught pasts they try to conceal from their community members. Like most North Falls citizens, “particularly the women, [they are] tough as nails” (53). Upon closer inspection, however, both women have complicated interior worlds and pasts. They’ve both made mistakes and try to conceal their shame from the outside world. The same is true of North Falls. The place appears idyllic from the outside, but in fact has a darker interior. Probing at the town’s facade reveals the true dichotomies that make up its complex identity. Just as no individual person is perfect, the novel suggests, no place is free from flaws.
The Impact of the Past on the Present
The novel uses the history returns trope to convey how the past will recur in the present if the individual does not confront it. In We Are All Guilty Here, North Falls, Georgia witnesses the same kidnapping and murder crime 12 years after Madison and Cheyenne were taken and killed. The recurrence of this crime is an analogy for history’s repetitive cycles. Like trauma and grief, if conflicts from the past go unattended, these same conflicts will continue to reiterate for the foreseeable future.
Emmy is deeply distraught when she discovers that Paisley Walker has disappeared because she wants to believe that she did solid police work on the Broken Angels Case. However, Paisley’s kidnapping forces her to confront the mistakes she made in the past so that she can redeem herself in the present. Once she acknowledges her past oversights—including failing to really delve into Adam Huntsinger’s history and trusting Virgil Ingram—Emmy is better able to find the perpetrator and rescue Paisley. The resolution of this case reflects Emmy’s internal work to reconcile her past and present experiences.
For Jude Archer’s character, the past returns in the form of her North Falls environment. She returns home when she hears about Paisley’s kidnapping and Gerald’s death after spending many years away. She finds that “North Falls hadn’t changed since she’d fled in the middle of the night” and that “North Falls people had remained the same” (225). The static nature of the town thus submerges Jude in memories of her former life there. Jude ran away after her twin brother Henry’s death. Although she tried returning with her newborn Emmy, Jude’s parents forced her out. Returning to the place where she experienced such trauma compromises Jude’s internal resolve. She wants “to ground herself in the present” (225) and to stave off memories of her painful past, but the past proves to be a ghost stalking the town. It is not until Jude begins to pursue a relationship with Emmy and to open up about what really happened to her years prior that she is able to pursue healing and peace of mind.
Although Jude and Emmy often want “to keep the past in the past” (351), the women’s police work in North Falls teaches them the repercussions of ignoring their personal histories and trauma. Together, they learn that they can redeem themselves and pursue new futures when they reconcile with the past.
The Challenges of Coping with Grief and Guilt
While the central conflict in We Are All Guilty Here revolves around Madison’s, Cheyenne’s, and Paisley’s disappearances, many of the North Falls townspeople are suffering in their own way. Emmy’s own experiences form the centerpiece of the novel, with her struggles to overcome her personal and professional regrets reflecting the challenges of coping with grief and guilt.
At the start of the novel, Emmy is in a toxic relationship with her husband and dealing with her mother Myrna’s Alzheimer’s, while also trying to adapt to her potential new position as police sheriff. She is already weighed down by sorrow when Madison and Cheyenne turn up dead. Their deaths then cause more upheaval in her life and surroundings. The crime effectively severs her relationship with Hannah. They “used to be best friends. Like sisters, practically. Then that stuff happened with Madison, and they never talked to each other again” (301). Hannah’s loss and grief over Madison cause her to attack and cut out Emmy.
Emmy feels so guilty over failing to save Madison that she cowers in shame and doesn’t fight to save her and Hannah’s friendship. Meanwhile, she has cut Dylan Alvarez out of her life too, convinced that her upset over her mother and best friend will always inhibit her chances at intimacy. Her grief and guilt cause her to self-isolate. She thinks she is protecting others from her sorrow, but is in fact hiding her sorrow from others. Over time, these self-protective habits only intensify Emmy’s suffering. Until she confronts the truth of her internal unrest, she cannot heal from it.
Emmy’s conversation with Dylan at the end of the novel conveys how opening up about one’s sorrow can create opportunities for healing. In their intimate scene of dialogue in Chapter 19, Emmy reveals that she has “been waiting so long for [her parents] to die” (410). The confession makes her “feel like a monster, but she couldn’t take back the truth” (410). In turn, the truth sets her free. Dylan does not judge her for her complicated feelings over losing her parents, but rather validates her emotions and reminds her “there’s no shame” (411) in what she’s experiencing. This moment marks a turning point for Emmy’s character. She is allowing herself to be vulnerable and is openly discussing her grief and guilt instead of hiding them.
Jude and Emmy’s conversation in Chapter 20 also reiterates the importance of sharing grief and guilt with others. When the women engage in open and honest conversation, they are learning to understand each other better. Jude tells Emmy more about her past, and Emmy offers Jude details about her life in North Falls over the years. This exchange captures Jude’s and Emmy’s concurrent work to face the emotional challenges life has given them, and to confront them with courage and grace.
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