53 pages • 1 hour read
Benjamin StevensonEveryone in My Family Has Killed Someone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “My Brother” - Part 3: “My Wife”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Ernie is awoken by a telephone call from his brother, Michael, who arrives at Ernie’s home soon after. Michael explains that the trunk of his car contains the body of a man whom he hit with his car. Michael clarifies that the man had been shot with a gun prior to Michael’s car striking him. In the car, Ernie also finds a duffle bag filled with cash.
Michael drives for two hours until he reaches a forest in a national park. He exits the car to dig a hole to bury the body and then asks Ernie to help. While digging, Ernie sees the body twitch. Certain the man is alive, Ernie tries chest compression on the man and argues with Michael about bringing him to the hospital. Michael tells Ernie that the money totals $260,000 and then returns to the body, only to insist after that the man is now definitely dead.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
Ernie attends a family reunion at Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat organized by his Aunt Katherine. The fresh snow makes driving up the mountain difficult, and Ernie arrives late, missing lunch. Katherine chastises him for his tardiness. He chats briefly with Katherine’s husband, Andy, and with his stepsister, Sofia, who makes jokes about the predictability of his late arrival.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Ernie joins the others in the dining room, where lunch is underway. The atmosphere is tense, and only in-laws Andy and Lucy (Michael’s wife) and Ernie’s stepfather, Marcelo, attempt to lighten the mood by chatting. At the end of the chapter, Ernie briefly recalls a moment during a trial when his mother stormed out of the courtroom; he then reveals that the reason for the reunion is that Michael is being released from prison, three years after the incident with the dying man he hit with his car.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
Ernie recalls the funeral of a police officer, and it becomes apparent that it is his father’s funeral. He explains that Marcelo was his father’s attorney and that he then began dating Ernie’s mother (Audrey) soon after. Marcelo also defended Michael during the murder trial; Ernie notes the light sentence was thanks to Marcelo, citing the difficulty of discerning for certain the degree to which Michael was culpable in the man’s death.
Ernie trudges to his chalet, where he finds some beer from Sofia waiting for him in the snow. Marcelo phones and says that because Audrey is not feeling well, they won’t be at dinner. Ernie drinks some water and then one of the beers, falling asleep after. He awakens when Sofia knocks on his door, asking if he has brought the money with him.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Ernie recounts how Michael asked him to keep the bag of money found with the man Michael hit with his car. Ernie took the bag and called the police as soon as he arrived home, reporting the location of the body. Both Michael and Ernie were subsequently questioned, but the bag remained untouched in Ernie’s home (Ernie assumed, wrongly, that the police would have searched his home and seized it). He has brought the money to the reunion as he plans to return it to Michael.
Sofia and Ernie discuss whether Michael will ask about the money. Ernie confides he has taken only a bit of it for himself, and Sofia asks if she can have $50,000 of it, saying she needs it, but not explaining what for. As they talk, the phone in the chalet rings, and Ernie notices the “room 2” notification is lit. After Sofia leaves, he returns the call to room 2 but is surprised to discover that it is Sofia’s chalet.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
Ernie awakens in the morning to witness a crowd of people milling about outside along with the red and blue lights of a police car. He joins them, locating Andy amid the crowd who tells Ernie a body is lying in the snow. Police ask for a doctor, and Sofia comes forward to check the man. She presumes him deceased. She, the police officer, Andy, and Ernie carry the body away.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
They place the body in a maintenance shed and briefly discuss who the dead man might be. The police officer proposes he may be a skier who got lost in the dark and succumbed to frost bite overnight. Detectives will arrive to investigate properly.
As Sofia, Andy, and Ernie leave, Sofia tells them that the man did not die of frostbite but is covered in ash. She proposes he died in a fire.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Ernie and the rest of the family have breakfast in the dining hall, where everyone is talking only of the dead man. Lucy insists they should leave, but Katherine insists they must stay and carry out the reunion as planned. Sofia discusses the condition of the body, certain he died in a fire. Katherine argues with her and then alludes to Sofia’s medical license being suspended. She reveals to Ernie that a patient died during surgery under Sofia’s care, and Sofia is being sued. An argument ensues, and breakfast ends with everyone storming off.
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary
The chapter contains only one sentence: “I don’t want to talk about it” (69).
Parts 1-3 Analysis
The opening section immediately establishes the metafictional aspect of the novel as narrator Ernie draws attention to the “rules” of mystery novels. Ernie directly acknowledges the trope of the unreliable narrator, calling into question his own trustworthiness. Readers are therefore meant to be on the lookout for any “tricks” that the narrator might employ in diverting attention away from the solution to the mystery, an effect that plays into the theme of The Quest for the Truth. The narrator’s repeated breaking of the fourth wall also aligns him with the reader, as an outside observer, even as Ernie remains a key player in the novel’s plot and conflict.
This section introduces many of the novel’s key characters and establishes the dynamics between family members. The Cunninghams have garnered a reputation as infamous among police. The source of this reputation is not known, but a backstory explanation is clearly pending. This reputation immediately calls into question the trustworthiness of members of the Cunningham family, building on the notion of the unreliable narrator. Indeed, Michael trusted Ernie enough to call on him to assist with the disposal of Alan Holton, but Ernie betrayed this trust by turning Michael in to authorities and later testifying against him in court. This action has since caused the Cunningham family to choose sides between the two brothers. Ernie’s choice is the most recent point of fracture in the family, and the other members’ reaction to it unfolds different layers to the theme of Familial Loyalty and Betrayal. Audrey, Ernie and Michael’s mother, is a staunch defender of Michael. The coldness with which she responds to Ernie and her insistence that the gathering’s focus remain on reuniting with Michael cements this. Marcelo is presented as a problematic character; as a stepfather, he is in one sense an outsider to the Cunningham family. But his legal defense of Michael and his friendship with Michael’s and Ernie’s father suggest an alliance with Audrey’s position: Michael should not be faulted for the death of Holton. Marcelo’s daughter, Sofia, is also a kind of outsider in the Cunningham family, and, indeed, Ernie acknowledges this status to a degree. However, Ernie emphasizes the closeness that has sprung up between the two of them as of late, suggesting that she is the only family member who aligns herself with Ernie.
The discovery of the dead body sets the central plot into motion. Initially, frostbite is a logical cause of death, but when Sofia insists that frostbite is not the cause of death, readers are positioned to attempt to link the death of this unknown individual with the death of Alan Holton and the release of Michael from prison. Similarly, the bag of money—an important symbol—is immediately introduced. Ernie positions readers to regard the bag of money as important and at the center of the death of Alan Holton; hereafter, family members’ awareness (or lack thereof) regarding the bag of money and their desires regarding it start to act as a barometer of familial trust. The focus on Sofia in this section positions readers to question her culpability in the murder. That she has knowledge of the bag of money and asks Ernie for $50,000 of it suggests she may be concealing nefarious motives. Further, her medical knowledge is called into question when Katherine insists Sofia is not a doctor. This bit of foreshadowing will later become a clue that helps the mystery of the dead body be pieced together.
This section also presents many unexplained plot points that appear to be important and many characters whose backstories come to light as the novel progresses. Another of these characters is Ernie’s wife, Erin. That the two are, according to Ernie, still married, but that she is absent, suggests something has occurred to drive them apart. Readers are positioned to speculate as to why, if the couple is separated, Erin would be in attendance at the Cunningham reunion. The circumstances surrounding the death of Ernie’s father, too, are hinted at but not completely explained. Ernie himself was therefore not fully aware of them at the time, being only a child, or he is intentionally withholding these details from the reader in order to build suspense or mislead them.
