Whidbey

The novel alternates among three women whose lives are bound by Calvin Boyer, a convicted pedophile: Birdie Chang, whom Calvin molested at age nine; Mary-Beth Boyer, Calvin's mother; and Linzie King, another of Calvin's victims who has written a bestselling memoir about her assault. Set primarily in the summer of 2013, the story opens with Birdie's flight to an isolated island and Mary-Beth's discovery that Calvin has been murdered, then spirals through time before a final omniscient section reveals how Calvin died and who is responsible.

Birdie Chang, a twenty-eight-year-old woman of Chinese and Appalachian descent, arrives on Whidbey Island in Washington State after choosing it at random on a map with her girlfriend, Trace Levenson. Birdie has lost her job as a film projectionist, and her identity as one of Calvin's victims has been publicly exposed by Linzie's memoir, My Turn: A Memoir of Survival. On the ferry, she meets Rich Amani, a Whidbey Island local who claims to work in boats and marinas, and who offers to kill Calvin, framing it as a favor between untraceable strangers. Birdie resists but gives him Calvin's name and location at Gateway to Grace, a reentry compound for sex offenders in Florida.

Under the alias Wilma Dean Loomis, Birdie rents an off-grid cabin from Thelma and Hal, an older couple on the island. She turns off her phone and reads the memoir obsessively, five times through, losing track of days. In the book, Birdie appears under the pseudonym "Jade Suzuki," her court records paraphrased without consent. Her case was dismissed despite video evidence, while Linzie, assaulted at thirteen, received a conviction and a media platform. This disparity fuels Birdie's rage.

In parallel, Mary-Beth Boyer, Calvin's fifty-six-year-old mother, learns on July 4 that her son is dead. Her sister, Syl Packman, an equestrian instructor from Ocala, Florida, arrives and drives her to Gateway to Grace, where Mary-Beth learns Calvin was run over repeatedly by a vehicle. At the funeral, a crowd of protesters in green wigs and masks storms the cemetery chanting "God Hates Calvin Boyer." Mary-Beth later clears Calvin's room and finds, in his desk, Linzie's memoir filled with angry marginal notes and a yellow legal pad listing three of Birdie's aliases. Calvin had been tracking her.

The novel intercuts Calvin's letters to Birdie, which swing between distorted tenderness and menace. He begs for forgiveness, then threatens to kill Linzie and proposes a murder-suicide. Excerpts from Linzie's memoir frame Calvin's grooming through the fairy tale of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," a metaphor she ties to the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge in Miami, where Calvin once lived among registered sex offenders mandated by Florida law to reside far from places children congregate.

Trace visits Birdie on Whidbey, and they reconnect physically for the first time in nearly a year. At a coffee shop, Trace spots a flyer for Linzie's reading at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle and tries to shield Birdie from it. Birdie sees it anyway. After Trace leaves, Birdie takes the ferry to the reading, planning to request her book be inscribed "to Jade Suzuki." Before the signing begins, it is canceled: Calvin Boyer has been found dead. From the apartment of Trace's cousin Havi, a night nurse in Seattle, Birdie calls Trace, who tells her Calvin was not killed in an accident. He was murdered.

Linzie's chapters reveal systemic exploitation layered on top of her original trauma. Her father, Doug, a Navy veteran turned freight dispatcher, submitted her application to The Dating Show without her knowledge. Producers pressured her to reveal her assault on camera, and the bachelor rejected her afterward. Doug then found Yale Gutterman, who became Linzie's ghostwriter. Yale fabricated details for the memoir, coached Linzie to perform her trauma on command, and later pressured her into a sexual encounter in a parking lot. Linzie dissociated during the assault.

Tommy Boyer, Calvin's estranged father, visits Mary-Beth at North Pole Gas & Save, the year-round Christmas-themed gas station where she works the graveyard shift. Tommy claims Trace killed Calvin, citing witnesses near Gateway who saw her the night of the murder. He reveals he had been speaking with Calvin by phone in his final weeks, a secret Calvin kept from Mary-Beth, who considered their daily calls sacred and exclusive.

Birdie's fragmented recollection of the abuse forms one of the novel's most devastating passages. She describes Calvin's bedroom with its UV-lit frog tanks and glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars, his telling her she was pretty, her feet not touching the ground as she sat on the bed's edge. That detail has shaped her sleeping posture for life: always one foot on the floor so she can run. She imagines threading the surveillance tape Calvin made through her Century projector, screening it alone, searching for the precise instant Before Calvin splits into After Calvin. She has never watched it.

The novel's third part shifts to omniscient narration, revealing what each character has concealed. Birdie writes some of Calvin's most threatening emails herself, fabricating explicit threats because his parole officer dismisses non-threatening contact as insufficient for action. Trace does not fly home after leaving Whidbey; she flies to Florida and shares Calvin's emails, including the forgeries, with locals at a bar near Gateway. The group drives to the compound with clubs and fireworks. Rich Amani never goes to Florida; he is Thelma and Hal's adopted nephew, and his violent fantasies stem from a car accident that killed his best friend. Birdie's mother, Wendy Chang, operates under a pseudonym in an online group and organizes the green-wigged funeral protest, her sole objective to see Mary-Beth in pain.

The most closely guarded revelation involves Syl's twin daughters, Genie and Nicola Packman, who are ten when Calvin spends a summer on their farm. Calvin sexually abuses Genie nightly while Nicola lies awake across the room. On July 3, the twins confront Syl, and Genie tells her mother that what Calvin did to Linzie, he has also done to her. Syl drives four hours to Gateway that night and confronts Calvin, who is dismissive. Minutes later, driving away on the dark gravel road, she sees Calvin barefoot in her headlights, injured after being chased from the compound by Trace's group. Syl accelerates, hits him, backs up, and runs him over five times. She drives away, planning to blame the vehicle damage on a deer.

Linzie's full trauma also emerges. Doug sexually abused her throughout childhood, telling her each time it was a dream. Months after Calvin's death, Linzie poisons Doug with a smoothie containing cassava and bitter almonds, natural sources of cyanide she learned about from Yale's wellness materials. She is arrested and imprisoned. Mary-Beth, removed from her Mrs. Claus role at North Pole after mothers recognize her from the news, finds Linzie's book in the station bathroom, lights it on fire, and tosses it at the base of the aluminum Christmas tree. The station burns. Mary-Beth drives toward Wyoming, the place she imagined she and Calvin could live freely.

At Lockwood Women's Correctional Institution, Syl's twins visit Linzie on her birthday. Genie invites Linzie to live with them after her release. Alone in her cell, Linzie imagines riding a horse for the first time.

On Labor Day, Birdie calls Francine Gerber, her childhood best friend and Calvin's first victim, from a landline. Francine does not answer, but the novel notes they will reconnect. Birdie turns on her phone for the first time all summer and rides to the ferry. The narrative reveals she will tell Trace about the forged letters, recognizing that she set the mechanism of Calvin's death in motion. She sees her boat pulling in, the same image that opened the novel, and promises to be a new person, starting now.