Condie’s protagonist, Ellery Wainwright, embodies the classic closed circle mystery trope of the amateur sleuth. Condie describes her as a woman in her early 40s, “around five ten” (116), the mother of three children and recently divorced from her husband of nearly 20 years. Throughout the novel, Ellery feels tormented by traumatic memories of a fatal accident that killed several of her students, highlighting the novel’s thematic exploration of The Trauma of Survivor’s Guilt. Condie’s narrative suggests that Ellery’s ongoing grief and loneliness allow her to see details about the murders at The Resort that others miss.

The novel begins just three months after Ellery’s divorce, and she’s introduced to the narrative as “electric with grief” (9). Ellery’s grief is so intense that she imagines she has transcended her body, becoming simply “a brain thinking about things it shouldn’t and nerve endings reaching out in every direction” (30). Condie’s descriptions highlight the intense physicality of Ellery’s grief, which threatens to consume her completely. The novel suggests that the pain of the divorce compounds the grief of the accident, rather than replacing it: Ellery describes it as “cruel timing, so many things piling on top of the other, that there [is] no way she [can] possibly bear it” (37).