“Gamma had never fit in with the Pikeville mothers, even before Rusty’s work had turned them into pariahs. Neighbors, teachers, people in the street, all had an opinion about Gamma Quinn, and it was seldom a positive one.”

Sam’s memory of Gamma sets up the novel’s critique of social conventions and criticisms of women, especially in more traditional communities. Gamma’s unusual personality and life experience may cause her social difficulty, but it provides a template for her daughters to be themselves, even if they are being shunned or criticized.

“This couldn’t be happening. Their mother couldn’t be dead. She was going to open her eyes. She was going to explain to them the workings of the cardiovascular system as she slowly put her body back together.”

The novel here emphasizes the shock and pain of Gamma’s death, setting up the significance to daughters of losing a mother which the narrative gradually unfolds as Sam and Charlie develop as characters. Sam’s youth and vulnerability if highlighted here: Her first instinct is denial, since the finality of death is unbearable. Sam cannot believe how her life has been upended in a moment, her intelligent, beautiful mother killed. Since Gamma is so capable, Sam briefly thinks she will return and fix her body alive.

“A person who has been up close when a gun is fired into another human being never mistakes the sound of a gunshot for something else.”

Slaughter uses extensive research on crime and trauma survivors to lend credence to the effects of violence on Sam and Charlie. When the school shooting begins, Charlie immediately recognizes the sound of bullets. Having witnessed the visceral brutality of a shooting up close, Charlie can never mistake the sound for fireworks or thunder, unlike many other people.