What Lies in the Woods

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-14

Chapters 15-23

Chapters 24-32

Chapters 33-39

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Cody and Naomi finish their visit; she considers trying to seduce him, but it becomes clear that he is devoted to his wife and family. Alone in her motel room, Naomi becomes uneasy and eventually drives out to the woods where the attack occurred. Her memories of the events are fragmentary, and she has never returned to this place. Naomi reads the letter she received: In it, Stahl’s son, AJ, warns that Naomi sent Stahl to prison under false pretenses.

Shaken by the letter, Naomi walks into the woods. She hears the sounds of footsteps nearby and feels terror: “It was dark and I was alone and no one knew I was here, and these woods had been promised my death and denied it” (65). She runs back to her car, and once she reaches safety, she begins to wonder if she was mistaken and there was no one in the woods after all.

Chapter 8 Summary

Naomi falls asleep in her parked car and is woken the next morning by a police officer. She finds a disturbing voicemail from Liv on her phone: “I have to…I’m sorry. I need you to know that. I’m so, so sorry” (69). Naomi decides to go to Liv’s home to check on her; Liv lives with her family in the same house where she grew up. Liv’s mother, Kimiko, assures Naomi that Liv came home late the night before and then left again early in the morning; she hasn’t yet returned, but Kimiko is confident that Liv is simply walking in the woods. Naomi is still concerned because Liv experiences mental illness and can be erratic in her behavior. Naomi looks through Liv’s room and finds sketches of the skeleton in the woods, all of which have been made recently. She also finds and removes a small piece of bone that Liv had taken from the skeleton years before.

Chapter 9 Summary

Naomi goes to Cass’s house to report that Liv is missing. Naomi persuades Cass that they need to go into the woods to where the skeleton is located—Liv might be there. As they make their way through the woods, Cass confirms that she’s always known that Naomi didn’t see Stahl and thus can’t be sure that he was her attacker. However, Cass is insistent: “Liv and I saw him. It was the truth. It just wasn’t your truth” (82). When Naomi explains that she received a letter from Stahl’s son, Cass counters that there’s no way AJ can know that Naomi didn’t see his father.

When Naomi and Cass arrive at the right spot, they inspect the shallow cave where the skeleton is located. Items they left there more than 20 years earlier are still present, but fresh lilies have also recently been placed next to the skeleton.

Chapter 10 Summary

Naomi thinks back to the tense atmosphere that dominated the summer when she and her friends found the skeleton and they were attacked. While they were close, she and Cass often argued. When the girls first discovered the skeleton, their instinct was to tell others: “It almost happened that way: us running out of the woods, telling the first person we saw that we’d found a body” (88). However, Cass became intrigued that the skeleton wore a bracelet with the name Persephone; since the girls often played a game in which they pretended to be ancient goddesses, this seemed symbolic.

Chapter 11 Summary

Based on the fresh flowers, Cass and Naomi know that Liv has been visiting the skeleton, but they still don’t know where she is. Naomi thinks back to a series of “rituals” that the friends completed in the woods when they played their goddess game as young girls. They had challenged each other to hold their breath as long as possible in a local pond, and Liv had frightened them by nearly drowning. They decide to head to the pond in search of Liv, but Cass injures her ankle along the way and can’t continue. Naomi goes on without her, admitting, “Cass was right. Liv was always going to be my priority. Because Cass didn’t need me, and Liv did” (92).

Close to the pond, Naomi runs into Ethan; he has been looking for her, hoping to make a better impression and persuade her to talk with him about her experiences. Ethan questions Naomi about how she could have been so confident in identifying Stahl as her attacker, but the two of them are sidetracked when they reach the pond and see Liv’s body floating in it. Naomi is devastated and drags Liv’s body out of the pond.

Chapter 12 Summary

Naomi is questioned by the police after finding Liv’s body. Given Liv’s history of mental illness and previous suicide attempts, Naomi assumes that Liv died by suicide. She is surprised when they tell her that Liv was shot in the head since “Liv wouldn’t use a gun. She hated them. She hated blood” (100). Naomi becomes concerned when the police begin to question her about the events of the night before; she admits that she was in the woods and that she thought she heard someone there. However, Naomi points out, and the police agree, that alarm records show that Liv returned to her home around 4:30 in the morning, hours after Naomi was in the woods. Liv’s death must have taken place later.

Naomi doesn’t tell the police about Liv’s desire to go public about the skeleton in the woods and about the resistance she and Cass displayed toward this suggestion. Eventually, the police reveal that Liv left a note, apologizing and indicating her plan to take her own life; if Liv shot herself, the gun is likely somewhere in the pond. Naomi leaves the police station, and Ethan drives her back to the motel, where he is also staying.

Chapter 13 Summary

Naomi goes to see Cass so that they can grieve together; she is surprised and hurt when Cass’s mother accuses her of being a negative influence in Cass’s life. Cass is eager to see Naomi, but the two of them quickly begin to argue about whether or not to say anything about the skeleton. Naomi thinks it would honor Liv’s wishes and memories to finally reveal the secret: “It’s what Liv wanted. She wanted Persephone to be found. To have peace” (112). Cass is insistent that it will only make things worse to bring up the skeleton and the fact that they have concealed it. Naomi also begins to speculate about whether Liv’s death could have been murder rather than suicide and whether someone could have wanted Liv dead to prevent her from talking about the skeleton.

Eventually, Cass and Naomi decide not to tell anyone about the skeleton or Liv’s desire to reveal it; they agree to instead try to find out what Liv knew about the skeleton’s identity. Secretly, Naomi decides that she will start investigating immediately, even if Cass is not ready yet.

Chapter 14 Summary

Naomi is at a loss as to how to find out the identity of the skeleton. When Ethan stops by to check on her, she decides to ask him for help with finding information about a missing person. He’s curious about why Naomi is asking, so she encourages him to think that she is researching other women who could potentially have been killed by Stahl. Ethan explains that over a five-year period, Stahl killed one or two victims every summer except for one, which has no known victims. Some speculate that this may mean Stahl killed additional people whose bodies have not been found.

Ethan also points out that Stahl was known to have revisited the locations where he hid bodies, sometimes months after the crime. Ethan and Naomi realize that when Stahl attacked Naomi (who did not match the typical profile of his other victims), he could have been visiting the hidden body of a previous victim and tried to kill her in an effort at concealment: “I wasn’t a target […] I was a witness. He wasn’t there for me at all” (124). Naomi still doesn’t mention the skeleton but wonders if the skeleton could be the body of one of Stahl’s victims.

Chapters 7-14 Analysis

Liv’s mysterious death contributes to the rising action of the plot and creates additional suspense and tension. Since Naomi has become increasingly uncertain about whether Stahl attacked her, Liv’s death raises the possibility that either someone who attacked Naomi is still out there or someone who knows something about the attack, the skeleton, or both is trying to cover up these events. Stahl’s death does not create any peace or closure in the plot, but rather triggers more conflict and confusion.

Liv’s death is somewhat ironic: When she first suggests coming forward about the skeleton, Naomi and Cass refuse because they think it could endanger their reputation and status. While Liv is braver than her two friends, and willing to take more risks, it seems that she may have paid for this courage with her life. The disagreement between the three friends hints at discord within the group, introducing the theme of Jealousy and Tension Within Friendships—a feature of their relationship that will become increasingly important to the novel’s plot.

The tragic discovery of Liv’s body reinforces the idea of the wild areas on the outskirts of Chester as sinister and threatening, building on the motif of the threatening forest wilderness. When Naomi first catches sight of the body, she experiences a kind of disassociation: “My mind rejected it, but my body knew” (95). This response reveals her history of trauma, with which she has often coped by shutting down. Naomi also notices that “[i]t [is] her hand [she sees] first, fingers bent” (94). This seemingly small detail contributes to the motif of hands and fingers throughout the novel: Naomi has kept finger bones from the skeleton, and in the final struggle with Cody at the end of the novel, she will lose the tips of her own fingers. This motif reflects the vulnerability and fragility of bodies being subjected to violence; it also plays with the idea of identity—and particularly criminal identity—since fingerprints lie at the tips of one’s fingers.

Because of the letter Naomi receives from Stahl’s son, and because of Liv’s mysterious death, this section significantly develops the theme of the Destructive Consequences of Lies. Because she lied about Stahl and concealed the presence of the skeleton, Naomi has been tormented by guilt for years. She often thinks back with regret and longing to the moment when she and her friends first found the skeleton and could simply have told an adult about this discovery: “Maybe none of the rest of it would have happened. No Stahl, no scars, no shattered lives” (88). This fantasy shows that Naomi attributes the various tragic events largely to the choice to keep the skeleton a secret. She later makes this belief even more explicit, using a metaphor that echoes the real scars on her body: “We’d wrapped our hands around our secrets like barbed wire, even when they cut into us” (106). The letter and Liv’s death show that the consequences of secrets and lies continue to pose an active threat to Naomi and her friends.

After the discovery of Liv’s body, Naomi fully commits to the role of detective: She wants to understand what happened to her friend, and she wants to honor Liv’s memory by uncovering the identity of the skeleton. Ironically, Naomi’s desire to solve these mysteries prompts her to engage with true crime podcasts, a genre that she has always avoided because of her own traumatic history: “I didn’t want to hear about people shot or beaten or strangled to death. I didn’t want to imagine them dying, alone and afraid” (119). Naomi satirizes the popular genre while conceding that she does need its skill set, concluding, “Maybe if I was one of those true-crime aficionados who could recite the name of every serial killer since Jack the ripper, I’d be better off” (117). The commentary on true crime entertainment is interesting in the context of a fictional story focused on murder and crime. Marshall’s narrative doesn’t feature real-life events or victims, so it would likely not be subject to the same critiques of unearthing trauma for the sake of entertainment (See: Background). At the same time, the voyeuristic fascination with crime is largely shared across both fictional and non-fictional representations, and therefore these critiques of true crime offer a metafictional subversion of the mystery/thriller genre as well.

Naomi’s commitment to investigating Liv’s death and the identity of the skeleton push her into a reluctant alliance with Ethan, prompting him to become a sidekick character who will work alongside Naomi. Ethan is initially an ambiguous character: He is respectful and caring toward Naomi, but his role as a podcast researcher casts doubt on his motives, implying that he might have sought out Naomi as a kind of true crime celebrity. In general, Naomi is wary of men: Her narrative voice portrays Oscar as suspicious, and she is largely disdainful toward Mitch, thinking wryly, “I’d known from the start that he’d sought me out because my sad story was written on my face […] it was as good a way to get laid as any” (58). Naomi is aware that many men cannot look past her history, attracted to the fantasy of saving her, or titillated by the proximity to trauma and violence. Naomi probably would not choose to trust Ethan or be truly honest with him if she could avoid it, but her desire to honor Liv’s memory overrides her misgivings and propels her into a new type of interaction with a man.