Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of grief and trauma, controlling behavior, domestic violence that results in death, and mental illness.

Maggie Carlton is one of the protagonists and first person narrators. The odd chapters are all written from her point of view. Maggie is 18 years old in the narrative present and has just moved to Lawton, Alabama, to live with her aunt Coralee, uncle Boone, and cousin Brady. Two years prior, Maggie watched her father shoot her mother, a tragedy which has come to define her life. She hasn’t spoken since the event because silence is a way for her to quiet her memories of her father’s violence and mother’s murder.

Maggie loves her family but doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to them. She remains quiet in their presence even when she wants to speak to them, because she’s still “afraid of [her] own voice” (2). While her aunt and uncle accept Maggie’s chosen coping mechanism, Brady is less tolerant. He understands that Maggie has been through unspeakable trauma but doesn’t want her oddity to compromise his normal high school life.