53 pages • 1 hour read
The Good Daughter
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Interlude 1-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Interlude 1 Summary: “What Happened to Samantha”
On March 16, 1986, in Pikeville, Georgia, 15-year-old Samantha (Sam) Quinn and her younger sister, 13-year-old Charlotte (Charlie), are at home. They and their parents live temporarily in an old farmhouse, nicknamed the HP, after their family home was burned down in an act of arson. Their father, Rusty, is a criminal defense lawyer for the state, known for defending those accused of the most serious violent and sexual crimes. Rusty attracts negative attention because of his work and the police believe the arson was committed for this reason.
The girls’ mother, Harriet or “Gamma,” has a genius-level IQ and two PhDs; she was given the nickname for her work with gamma rays. She gave up her career to come to Pikeville to care for her aging parents and then be a stay-at-home mom. As Gamma prepares dinner, Rusty calls from the courthouse to say that the sheriff is sending a patrol car over for the family’s safety; one of Rusty’s defendants was acquitted that day, resulting in public outcry. That evening, Gamma unexpectedly hugs Sam in the bathroom and tells her to always watch out for Charlie. Gamma and Sam tend to align with each other, while gregarious and emotional Rusty and Charlie band together.
As Gamma and Sam are talking, two armed men in ski masks break into the house. The men summon Gamma and Sam in the hall where they are holding Charlie, and ask for Rusty. When Gamma tries to get the more aggressive of the two young men to lower his gun, he shoots her in the face, killing her instantly. The second man admonishes his partner for the shooting, calling him Zach. Sam now recognizes the shooter as Zachariah Culpepper, one of her father’s clients. Zach senses Sam has recognized him. When Zach openly leers at Charlie, Sam calls him a “pervert.” Zach physically attacks Sam. The two men then abduct the girls, taking them to the nearby woods, where they intend to kill them
Remembering her promise to Gamma to protect Charlie, Sam whispers to Charlie to run away whenever she gets the opportunity. Meanwhile, Zach’s companion argues with Zach that they should let the girls go. The plan was to target Rusty, not his family. The group approaches a newly dug hole—which the men had prepared for Rusty’s body in advance. The men see the headlights of the sheriff’s car approach the house and become impatient. When the men begin to argue about how to kill the girls, Charlie runs away and Sam follows. The younger man shoots Sam in the head. Sam passes out and dreams that Gamma is hugging her, keeping her safe. She wakes up in the dark with her hands cupped around her mouth. She realizes that the men have buried her in the grave. Sam calms herself and kicks against the dirt. She breaks out of the hurriedly-packed grave and makes her way through the forest to the sheriff’s car.
Chapter 1 Summary
28 years later, Charlie is 41, a defense lawyer separated from her husband Ben Bernard, an assistant district attorney. Charlie is visiting Pikeville Middle School to see Huck, a man with whom she hooked up the previous night. Being back at school reignites memories of the intense bullying she faced following the attack on the Quinns. Zachariah Culpepper was sentenced to death, and Daniel, his brother and accomplice killed by the police; after this, the Culpepper family incessantly taunted Charlie.
Huck initially flirts with Charlie, but grows still when he hears her surname. Charlie assumes it is because she is the daughter of Rusty Quinn, whom the people of Pikeville love to hate. While they talk, they hear gunshots in the corridor. Huck alerts the police while Charlie rushes out to confront the shooter. She sees Doug Pinkman, the school principal, dead on the ground. His wife, Judith Pinkman, is next to him, cradling an eight-year-old girl who has also been shot dead. The violence makes trauma survivor Charlie go numb. She collapses by the little girl and sees herself lying in the forest on the night of Gamma’s murder. Charlie collects herself enough to notice that the shooter is a teenage girl dressed in all black, sitting on the floor and holding a revolver. Huck, who rushed out after Charlie, tells her the girl’s name is Kelly Wilson. Huck approaches Kelly and tries to get her to put the gun down. Police arrive on the scene and ask Huck to move back, pointing their guns at Kelly. Even though Kelly slowly hands over the revolver to Huck, the cops shoot at her.
Chapter 2 Summary
Huck reflexively moves in front of Kelly and gets shot in the shoulder. The cops pin Kelly to the floor. Judith Pinkman prays which triggers Charlie’s memory of the night her mother was killed. After Charlie ran away, she came to a farmhouse where Judith Pinkman, then Judith Heller, lived with her father. Judith had helped Charlie and had prayed then too. Charlie returns to the present and notes that the cops are treating Kelly very roughly, grinding her shoulder into the floor and calling her sexist slurs. Huck protests that Kelly is only 16 and the cops should go easy on her. An enraged Charlie begins recording the cops’ conduct. The policemen notice and demand her phone. When Charlie refuses, Greg Benner, one of the cops, elbows her in the nose, making it bleed.
Chapter 3 Summary
Charlie is handcuffed and taken to the precinct. Being back in the precinct reminds her how she had begged the hospital nurses for a bath after she was rescued the night of Gamma’s death. She had been sticky with blood. As she awaits interrogation in the interview room, Charlie recalls the officers at the school concocting the story that she had been hostile. Huck, an ex-military member, is corroborating the police’s story. Charlie’s estranged husband, Ben, visits her. Ben tells Charlie that Kelly is on suicide watch. The little girl who died is Lucy Alexander. Ben has gotten the police to drop the obstruction of justice charges against Charlie. He asks Charlie if she wants to file a case of excessive force, but Charlie says all she wants is an apology from Greg Benner, the officer who hit her. Ben tells Charlie that he has spoken to all the eyewitnesses on the scene. Charlie understands this means he has spoken to Huck and learned about their short affair. She apologizes to Ben.
Officer Delia Wofford from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation comes in to question Charlie, since Ben has submitted that the local police may be biased against her. In the past, Charlie has won a couple of cases against the police department for their use of excessive force. Wofford tells Charlie that Kelly will be tried as an adult since her actual age is 18, not 16. As Charlie recounts the series of events, she reveals that she heard four shots from the gym room before she ran out in the hallway. Kelly had been sitting against the wall with the gun in her hand, positioned as if she was planning to kill herself. She finally gave the gun to Huck. Wofford questions her repeatedly on the last point, indicating that the revolver has not been found on the scene. When Wofford comments that Charlie’s testimony seems fuzzy, Charlie explains that trauma turns memory from a straight line into a “sphere.” After Wofford leaves, Charlie is set free. She wonders why Kelly Wilson would commit a school shooting; typically, most school shootings are committed by men. It is also unclear why Kelly, at 18, was in the middle school.
Charlie meets Ben again and he is angry with her for spending a night with Huck.
Chapter 4 Summary
Lenore, Rusty’s secretary and best friend, picks up Charlie from the courthouse. She tells Charlie that Rusty is with Kelly Wilson at the hospital, and wants Charlie to take up Kelly’s case. Charlie asks Lenore to drive her to the Wilsons’ home, a trailer in the Holler, the more deprived part of town. On the way, Charlie reflects on the aftermath of the attack on the Quinns. Police officer Ken Coin, now the DA, had gone after the Culpeppers after Charlie was rescued from Miss Heller’s farmhouse. Ken had shot dead Daniel, Zach’s younger brother immediately when he opened the door to his trailer. Zach was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Zach is still alive, awaiting execution in a maximum-security prison. Charlie had testified against Zach, asking the judge for a death sentence for him. Sam, who was recovering from damage to her brain, had hardly been able to testify. The Culpeppers had always insisted Daniel was not involved in the crime against the Quinns, even though Zach himself had claimed his brother’s involvement and the murder weapon had been recovered from Daniel.
Charlie cries and Lenore comforts her. As they pull up at the Wilson trailer, Lenore tells Charlie the police will be coming soon to search it. Lenore stands outside while Charlie goes to meet Kelly’s mother, Ava. Kelly’s tiny room is very neat although her writing indicates she has some learning difficulties. Charlie locates a middle-school yearbook and grabs it, just as a SWAT car filled with six fully-armed police officers pulls up. The men storm the house, and point their guns at Charlie and Ava, just because Ava is holding a couple of toothbrushes. Officer Isaac, a woman, diffuses the situation and questions Charlie. Charlie asks her for a copy of the search warrant on the Wilson house.
Later, Charlie speaks to Huck on the phone and asks him about the missing revolver. Huck confesses he took the weapon as a conditioned response. Charlie asks Huck if he was sexually involved with Kelly, and a disgusted Huck refutes this. Charlie tells Huck he may be in trouble for taking away the murder weapon.
Interlude 1-Chapter 4 Analysis
The opening section introduces the reader to the novel’s narrative structure, intermittently split between two timelines and narrative voices, with numbered chapters recounting the present, and named sections recalling the past from the varying perspectives of Sam and Charlie. The perspectives often overlap and differ, mirroring the complicated nature in which memory functions after a traumatic event. Slaughter’s straightforward tone and realist style are quickly established, with figurative expressions used sparingly, to tell her story. The narrative treats the facts of the story as powerful and dramatic in their own right, letting them speak. When figurative language is used, it is to capture the sense of loss and trauma an individual feels against the forces of fate and institutions. For instance, when Charlie sees policemen enter the school, she describes them as a “swarm,” the air billowing around them “like the cartoon swirls that came out of clouds” (57). The similes describe Charlie’s state of mind at being engulfed by the officers. Characters also use humor, witty dialogue, and pithy observations to cope with the complex world they inhabit. This is evident in Gamma’s interactions with her children, and Charlie’s irony.
In both timelines, the author lets out information at a controlled pace, creating unanswered questions and building suspense in the narrative. For instance, at the end of the first interlude, it is not clear what happened to Charlie after she ran away, while in the present timeline, Sam’s whereabouts are unknown. It is also unknown who is the good daughter to which the title refers, leaving it to the reader and the unfolding plot to reveal this secret. Further, the author uses instances of foreshadowing to suggest the depth of Charlie’s trauma. In Chapter 1, when Charlie sees the carnage at Pikeville Middle School, she notes that even though she might box up its horrifying memory, her experience tells her that the memory will leak out. This foreshadows the later reveal that Rusty asked Charlie to box up her memory of rape and assault.
The first section introduces the text’s key theme of The Lingering Impact of Violence and Trauma illustrated through Charlie’s response to the school shooting. Every bit of stimulus during the shooting triggers an old memory for Charlie. For instance, when Charlie sees Lucy’s body on the ground, she immediately flashes back to herself lying on the forest floor. When Wofford tells Charlie her timelines are getting fuzzy, Charlie explains that the memory of traumatic events does not flow in a single line but in a sphere. Charlie knows this because she had lived such a traumatic event before. To highlight why violence leaves such psychological residue, the author describes Gamma’s murder in graphic terms. Gamma’s blood, flesh, and bone splattering on her daughters, the cruel way in which Zach shreds Sam’s eyeballs, and Sam’s experience being buried alive, all paint a visceral image of the violence of that night. This shows that death is not abstract, but a bodily reality for Charlie and Sam, its physical proximity altering them profoundly.
As the treatment of Kelly shows, The Flaws in the Criminal Justice System is established as a central theme, including scenes of police brutality and corruption. While Kelly is obviously involved in the school shooting, she is not actively endangering anyone at the time the police officers rush in. In fact, she is on the verge of giving up her revolver. Yet, the officers try to shoot her, getting Huck instead. Later, they pin the petite teenager to the ground, “as if she were a violent con” (59), a cop kneeling on her legs. In Chapter 4, when the police come over to search the Wilson home, Charlie notes that “six massive cops in their full tactical gear took up every available inch of the room” (112). The officers have their guns trained on Ava and Charlie, ready to pull the trigger on them, simply because they mistake the toothbrushes Ava is holding for weapons. The exaggerated response of the officers in all these instances shows that the system is excessively hostile toward anyone they consider on the other side of the law. The treatment of Kelly, as well as Rusty’s decision to defend people charged with the worst of crimes, opens up an important conversation about restorative versus retributive justice, and the importance of forgetting versus forgiving.
In terms of The Complex Dynamics in Families, the picture that emerges of the Quinns in this early section is of a group of unique, individualistic people bound by love despite their differences. In the first interlude, Sam notes that Gamma can be overtly critical and sharp-tongued, yet it is obvious that Sam adores her mother. The novel further establishes this complex yet loving dynamic through the banter flowing between mother and daughters. For instance, when Gamma cannot find anything to cook, she tells Sam and Charlie, “I hope you don’t mind being vegetarian tonight” (10). While Sam and Charlie squabble constantly, Sam is ready to give up her life for her younger sister, offering herself to Zach to spare Charlie, and later, urging Charlie to run away. These dynamics foreshadow that the Quinns, especially the sisters, can only move forward when they reclaim the love they have for each other. The first set of chapters also conveys a sense of stasis, particularly for Charlie. Readers may find it puzzling that Charlie has chosen to stay in Pikeville, the small town where her mother was killed, and to continue to work in the same field as her father. Despite triggers of past trauma lying in wait for Charlie at every step, she has not stepped away. This indicates Charlie is stuck in the past, foreshadowing the later information that she has been unable to process her trauma in a healthy way as a result of enforced secrecy.
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